Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Cameron and Miliband squabble over the NHS, while saying nothing

It didn’t work. But it was a good idea. David Cameron prepared an ambush for Ed Miliband at PMQs today. The trouble was he attacked the Labour leader for a vice he himself has mastered with conspicuous aplomb: question dodging.

Miliband is clearly in trouble. He’s using his only remaining strength, the NHS, to prop up his burgeoning weaknesses. Expect this to continue till next May. There’s always a calamity somewhere in the NHS and for Miliband, ill tidings are like gold dust. He painted a picture of a basket-case health system that would have shamed a failed state in the Middle Ages. Cameron, he said, wasted billions on a massive inter-departmental rejig when he came to power. Since then the Tories have delivered ‘five years of crisis’ and left social care ‘at breaking point.’

Anyone feeling poorly will have postponed their trip to A&E.

Cameron countered that the NHS is thriving.

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