Pmqs

That was a close one. Miliband set two traps for the PM today. One was visible. The other, far more dangerous, was hidden until the very last moment. Miliband wants Tories to vote against a bill that will forbid serving MPs from acting as company directors. This connects sweetly with his  ‘Thatcherite swine gobbling at the Westminster trough’ motif. The Labour leader asked Cameron if he minded MPs having two jobs. ‘He has a chance to vote for change tonight.’ Cameron blithely objected that the new bill excludes directors of family businesses but not ‘paid trade union officials.’ Miliband pounced. Conceding Cameron’s point, he offered to make a ‘manuscript amendment’

The Swiss list, or swizz list, dominated PMQs. Ed Miliband was keen to paint Cameron as the beneficiary of ‘dodgy’ donors who craftily side-stepped their tax bills and funnelled the proceeds back to Tory HQ. The stink also enveloped Stephen Green, given a peerage by Cameron, who ran HSBC at a time when it helped millionaires to, let us say, ‘overlook their obligations to the Treasury’. Nine years back it was even suggested, by Bloomberg, that the bank had stooped to money laundering while Green was in charge. Nonsense, said his friends, the money wasn’t being laundered, just given a rinse and a whizz over with the iron. In the

How did he get away with that? We’re assured that somewhere inside Labour HQ there toils a crack team of sleuths, analysts, Cameron-watchers, policy-fetishists and high-IQ saboteurs who spend all week devising Miliband’s Wednesday assault on the prime minister. And yet these world-class strategists seem to get beaten every time by the most predictable of dodges. Cameron doesn’t even prepare his defence. He just makes it up on the spot. Today Miliband went for the big one: hit Cameron with corruption charges. Or as near as damn it. The government has spared hedge funds from the duty payable on share dealings which is levied on all other financial players. The

David Cameron ran down the clock very effectively at PMQs. With only a few sessions left between now and the general election, Cameron blocked Miliband’s questions on the health service by demanding that the Labour leader apologise for apparently saying that he wanted to ‘weaponise’ the NHS in this election campaign. Despite Cameron now using this line at every PMQs, Miliband had no effective response to it. So, Cameron was able to get away with simply not answering Miliband’s questions. The result: at the end of PMQs, politics was in the same place as it was at the start and with the Tories now convinced that events are moving their

David Cameron cantered home at PMQs today. Armed with both good employment numbers, praise from Obama and the IMF for the UK economy and the delay in publication to the Chilcot Report, he held off Miliband with ease. The Labour leader, so feisty last week, seemed oddly listless today, getting animated only when he accused Cameron of running scared of TV debates. Cameron, by contrast, seemed to be enjoying himself. He even found time to mock Miliband’s disastrous stint as a house guest in Doncaster, as chronicled in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. Perhaps, though, the most significant moment of the session came right at the end when

Would he say no to saying no? The first question at PMQs, from Gregg McClymont, was about Cameron’s vote in the EU referendum, (if it ever happens). McClymont wants the PM to rule out ruling out Britain’s participation in the economic suicide pact based in Brussels. Nope, said Cameron. He went on to boast that ever since he floated his referendum theory, foreign firms have been swarming to our shores and setting up shop in Britain. We might export this solution to the Eurozone. Make the referendum EU-wide and the investment gods will squirt prosperity into every crack and cranny of this seized-up continent. In/out dominated Miliband’s questions too, as

Cameron is away in Ankara. His mission is to annoy the Germans by inviting Turkey to join the EU as soon as possible. It all sounds like fun. Let’s hope the Turks know they’re being used as pawns in a much bigger game. His absence left Deputy Clegg facing Deputy Harman at PMQs. Clegg’s chief gift at the dispatch-box is for coining and distributing insults. It’s not a winning talent though, and his manner is far too prickly for national leadership. His attractive looks, posh schooling and agile tongue should have resolved themselves into something softer and more generous. Yet he still comes across as a Leninist crusty who happens