Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: All Miliband has left is food banks and class war

Tough times for Ed Miliband. He looked pretty glum at the start of PMQs. Was he wishing that Syria had developed in a different direction? A few weeks of statesmanlike ‘unity and consensus’ – while Assad got his wrists slapped by a volley of Tomahawks – might have suited him better.

Instead he was forced onto the domestic agenda. And it’s turning into quicksand. All his best accusations have been sucked into the mire. He can no longer mention the following: flat-lining, Plan B, the double dip, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, cutting too fast and too deep. As for his trustiest platitude – ‘a recession made in Downing Street’ – that now sounds as quaint as ‘dial-up’ or ‘Suffragette’.

Is anything left? Food banks. And class war. We heard plenty of both.

But first Miliband made a brave attempt to skewer the PM with a sharpened statistic.

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