Pmqs

Talking about energy bills week in, week out might be good politics for both parties, but it sure does make for a grumpy PMQs session. David Cameron was still rather ratty this week, but he managed some better attacks on Miliband than he’s done in the past few weeks of the great energy debate. He tried to pin the blame for the current state of the energy market on Miliband, saying: ‘Who gave us the Big Six? Yes, when Labour first looked at this, there were almost 20, but because of his stewardship we’ve ended up with six players.’ He also accused the party of pushing for yet more price

At PMQs today, the Tories’s energy policy went bi-polar. The Conservatives now seem to touch both extremes of the debate. For eight years they’ve presented themselves as a gang of happy tree-huggers who applaud every green subsidy going. But today David Cameron announced his plan to ‘roll back some of the green regulations and charges’. John Major started it all. Yesterday he lurched back into front-line politics by suggesting that energy companies should pay a windfall tax this winter. Otherwise, he said, the poor will have to choose between starving or freezing to death. Number 10 called this bombshell ‘interesting’. Ed Miliband asked David Cameron if John Major was now

The Clangers are back. And not just on television. At PMQs, both the party leaders tried to embarrass each other with solecisms, exaggerations – and, yes, clangers – which they’d dropped in the past. Ed Miliband led with the cost of living crisis and said ‘record numbers are now working part-time’. Cameron retaliated with a Miliband prediction from October 2010. ‘The government programme will lead to the disappearance of one million jobs,’ Wrong! A million jobs have been created. Miliband brought up his pet-policy, the energy bill freeze, and accused Cameron of supporting the Big Six fuel giants. A price con, not a price freeze, said Cameron. And why had

Here’s a favourite Tory joke. Question: What does ‘BBC’ stand for? Answer: Buggers Broadcasting Communism. David Cameron seemed tempted to try this gag at PMQs today. He mentioned the Beeb four times in sardonic asides. ‘Let’s praise the BBC for once,’ he said, bitingly. He woke this morning, he said, to a BBC report stating that public satisfaction with council services had risen despite the cuts. ‘I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’ He berated Ed Miliband for wanting to introduce new decarbonisation targets. ‘Even the BBC doesn’t agree with that.’ And he attacked Milband’s promise to freeze energy bills as evidence that ‘he’d like to live in a

Tough times for Ed Miliband. He looked pretty glum at the start of PMQs. Was he wishing that Syria had developed in a different direction? A few weeks of statesmanlike ‘unity and consensus’ – while Assad got his wrists slapped by a volley of Tomahawks – might have suited him better. Instead he was forced onto the domestic agenda. And it’s turning into quicksand. All his best accusations have been sucked into the mire. He can no longer mention the following: flat-lining, Plan B, the double dip, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, cutting too fast and too deep. As for his trustiest platitude – ‘a recession made in Downing

There’s nothing wrong with the Prime Minister turning up to PMQs with a snappy line that he wants those watching to remember. But sometimes as the exchanges wear on, the risk grows that the clever line isn’t going to get a showing because the questions haven’t been quite right. And so the line gets shoehorned into an answer that isn’t quite relevant. Take today’s question from Margaret Beckett on the lobbying bill that last night some Tory MPs decided to vote against. Beckett asked: ‘Why does the PM believe that his plans to restrict lobbying are opposed by organisations from the Salvation Army, Countryside Alliance, Oxfam, the British Legion and so

Cigs and booze. These issues dominated PMQs today. Ed Miliband tried to portray the PM as a puppet of ‘Big Tobacco’ whose decision not to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes was influenced by his electoral guru, Lynton Crosby. Had the PM ever ‘had a conversation’ with Crosby about fag packets? Shifty Cameron dodged sideways and declared that Crosby never ‘lobbied me about anything’. ‘Weasel words,’ said Miliband, looking triumphant. He quoted a Tory GP, Sarah Wollaston, who labelled the decision ‘a day of shame’ for the government. Up popped the lady herself from the backbenches. Dr Wollaston begged the PM to re-think his decision against ‘minimum unit pricing’, which she

Andy Murray’s joy is now complete. Yes, he won Wimbledon and all that, but his crowning glory came today when he was mentioned at the start of PMQs. Cameron apparently has no idea how goofy and devious he looked last Sunday when he half-opened the door of Downing Street and stepped out to greet Murray with a shifty smirk plastered across his face. In the House, he declared that the first British victory at Wimbledon in 77 years was a historic event. Ed Miliband agreed but appended the triumph of Virginia Wade in 1977 to Cameron’s tribute. This was greeted by a Labour cheer so loud that it registered at