Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Tasered choirboys and hilarious failings

Shock news at PMQs. Miliband scored a hit. He succeeded in making Cameron look silly. True, he enjoyed his triumph a little too much, but his performance will have cheered his party enormously. For weeks they’ve had to watch their leader bungling at the despatch-box like an octopus trying to make a pancake.

Miliband’s weapon of choice: statistics. It’s hard to use mere mathematics to hurt a politician but Miliband handled his materials with deadly aplomb. He uncovered woeful failures in government programmes. And the revelations weren’t just bad. They were hilariously bad.

He kicked off with a statement from Michael Gove, last May, that ‘work would begin immediately’ on 216 schools. ‘How many have been started?’ asked Miliband. Cameron didn’t know.

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