Thwack! That was the sound of Ed Miliband being knocked for six at PMQs. He didn’t stand a chance. Even before he could get to his feet, David Cameron had put a question to him. Against the rules. But so what? Cameron wanted to know if the Labour leader would withdraw his constant attacks on Tory plans to remove child benefit from high earners?
Miliband stood up midst a barrage of Tory jeers, (and a few supplementary squawks from LibDems too). The humiliation of Labour’s U-turn showed on his face. He looked like an elevator-boy with his conk caught in the closing doors. The chamber was in full cry and the decibel levels were rising. And he still hadn’t spoken a word! So he tried to master the house by affecting an expression of patient but affronted dignity, like a nun being told a dirty joke. This didn’t work either. Finally he raised his bleat above the din and accused the PM of mismanaging A&E waiting times.
Cameron’s reply was threadbare and opportunistic but he presented his arguments with gusto and conviction. The house was behind him.
He blamed the appalling queues in A&E on the GP contract, introduced by Labour, which pays doctors to quit their surgeries in mid-afternoon just as the cocktail hour strikes. Patients are hobbling into A&E while their doctors are out hitting golf balls or taking salsa lessons.
The PM cited Mid-Staffordshire as evidence of previous Labour blunders. And he dragged Wales into the mix as well – where healthcare targets are consistently missed – and he had a good old gloat about that too.
How Labour must have groaned. Health is their best topic and yet here was David Cameron weaving and jinking around the issue as if he’d just won a landslide. Backbencher Robert Flello raised A&E again but he won barely a peep of support from his own side. When plucky Briget Phillipson did the same thing she was greeted like the arrival of the sniffer dogs at Glastonbury. In a shifty and embarrased silence.
Cameron didn’t have it all his own way. John Woodcock asked about the right-of-recall legislation which is aimed at philandering, corrupt, bone-idle and generally useless MPs. The new powers are intended to end the scourge of rotten boroughs, or ‘safe seats,’ as they’re known, which make up 70 per cent of constituencies. A seat is only safe if the electorate is getting sat on.
Cameron’s replies were not reassuring. He said the Standards and Privileges committee must first censure an MP before recall proceedings can begin. This means the government, acting like a closed shop, has leapt to the defence of lousy MPs by guaranteeing them access to an appeal court even before the voters can pursue their case. Worse, Cameron presented this protectionist dodge in offensive language. The policy, he said, will ‘avoid vexatious attempts to get rid of MPs who’re doing a perfectly good job.’ Quite staggering. To suggest that MPs ‘doing a perfectly good job’ might be hounded by a rag-bag of frivolous and mean-spirited electors is paranoid nonsense. And to label voters ‘vexatious’ for wanting an MP to be honest and reliable is simply rude.
Parliament is there to guarantee democracy not to hire its own members, like party thugs in China, to hunt down and strangle the democratic urge wherever it appears.
UKIP will cheer when they see PM’s swinging his axe at the roots parliament today.
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