PMQs sketch: Miliband begins to run out of arguments

Syria overshadowed PMQs today. The chamber was quiet and sombre. And both leaders were clearly about to do their world-statesman bit. Ed Miliband rose to his feet with an air of ineffable goodness. He looked like St Peter on his way to donate the dead Judas’s sandals to a charity shop.

He asked about Britain’s readiness to accept Syrian refugees in accordance with a UN directive.

Britain, said Cameron, is already the second largest donor to Syria. And the crisis can’t be solved by few hundred refugee placements. Miliband used two more questions to press the case for ‘orphans who had lost both parents.’ Cameron said he was prepared to ‘listen to the arguments’.

‘I feel we are gradually inching forward on this issue,’ said Miliband. And he allowed himself a little smile of fatigue and contempt. It said a lot, that smile. It affirmed the Labour view that Cameron’s moral turpitude is an ongoing calamity which can only be remedied by a general mobilisation of Britain’s most high-minded and progressive citizens.