Pmqs

At last it happened. Benn led Labour. Hilary Benn, grandson of a hereditary peer, stood up at PMQs on behalf of the dispossessed. Gravitas was his chosen register. Radicalisation was his chosen theme. His policy: more cash for cops and teacher to discourage Muslims from joining the death-cult. Let’s hope it works. The SNP’s Angus Robertson asked how Sir John Chilcot is proceeding with his slim volume of research into the Iraq war. Who knows? It’s said that Lord Lloyd Webber has already abandoned his ‘Chilcot the Musical’ project because investors couldn’t agree how many years each performance should last. His spokesman, pressed this morning for a deadline, confirmed that

On Wednesday at Noon, George Osborne will rise to respond for the government at Prime Minister’s Questions. The symbolism of this moment won’t be lost on anyone on the Tory benches. It will be the start of Osborne’s audition for the top job. A few years ago, the idea of Osborne as Prime Minister was—as one of his backers puts it—‘a minority taste’. But now, he continues, ‘it is a mainstream assumption’. What has changed things is the economic recovery and the Tories’ surprise election victory, which has vindicated Osborne’s political strategy. Osborne, I argue in the Mail on Sunday, has also become a better politician in recent years; more

Poor old Labour. They’re still so crushed by the election result that they put up dead-parrot Harriet Harman against Cameron every Wednesday. Why not let the leadership candidates use him for target practice instead? PMQs is sometimes a contest of ideas and sometimes a contest of insults. Today it was a contest of moral registers. Harman asked about the EU referendum and Cameron scoffed at her colleagues for voting en bloc for a referendum they’ve opposed for five long years. ‘The biggest mass conversion since that Chinese general baptised his troops with a hose pipe.’ Harman was off. She scrambled to the top of Sanctimony Hill and delivered a sermon on the

‘Don’t gloat’. Cameron trotted along to the Commons today with this commandment ringing in his ears. He nearly managed it. But his manner betrayed his state of mind. There was an audible zing, an irrepressible sunniness in his voice as he inaugurated his second term. ‘This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.’ Rarely has that formula held such a fizzy, cocaine kick. Labour’s acting leader, for now, is Harriet Harman. Is she about to pack it in? She seemed passionless and out of sorts. A scowl kept stealing across her lips as she delivered her joke-free lines. She was like a disgruntled lady mayoress opening a fete

Ed Miliband had a disastrous PMQs today after the Labour leader claimed the Tories would raise VAT, only to have David Cameron deny that he would increase the tax. Besides leaving Miliband lost for words, Cameron’s pledge has also left a massive hole in Labour’s election campaign. It was only yesterday that Ed Balls unveiled a snazzy new poster, which contained a big ‘VAT’ swinging into a warning about the Tories’ plans. With their key line now discredited, will someone find a landfill stuffed with Labour posters in a few days time?

Rather predictably, Ed Miliband went on the TV debates again today at PMQs. Labour believe that Cameron’s refusal to do a head to head debate, despite having previously indicated he would, can be turned into an issue of character. Miliband today labelled Cameron a bully who runs away when someone stands up to him. But Cameron had his own line to push, that Miliband wanted to crawl into Downing Street on the SNP’s coattails. Every jibe from Miliband was met with this response. It was not an edifying spectacle and the glee with which the SNP watched proceedings did make one wonder where this tactic could lead. But Tory MPs,