James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband’s attacks fell flat at PMQs

The stage was set for Ed Miliband at PMQs today. Just before the session, The Guardian revealed the names of various Tony donors who allegedly had accounts with HSBC’s Swiss bank. Miliband duly went for Cameron over the matter with some of his most personal attacks yet, accusing Cameron of being a ‘dodgy Prime Minister’ and ‘something rotten’ at the heart of the Tory party. But the attack failed to hit home in the Chamber.

Labour did salvage the situation somewhat by, at what looked like Miliband’s own instigation, getting several of its MPs to ask Cameron again, the question he hadn’t answered: did he ever have conversations with Lord Green, the former HSBC head who served as a trade minister Cameron, about tax avoidance at the bank’s Swiss branch? Cameron kept sidestepping the question, saying instead that all the proper procedures had been followed when Green was ennobled and made a minister.

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