Pmqs

Tory MPs are in a funny state of mind this morning. They’re pleased that the Prime Minister has started to give some meaty details of what he wants from an EU renegotiation. But they’re also confused that there seems to be no media operation to ‘soak up’ this new line. There aren’t any ministers hogging the microphone in broadcast studios, beyond an exclusive interview that the Prime Minister has given to the BBC. The whole operation could do with a bit more punch. This might change in just under ten minutes’ time when PMQs kicks off, followed by an urgent question on the policy. But before then, here’s another theory.

It started as soon as Ed Miliband stood up at PMQs today. ‘Nightmare!’ yelled the Tories. ‘Nightmare!’ They’d been fired up by the first question from Steve Brine, who craftily double-loaded his query. He referenced the Co-op bank and the ‘nightmare email’ in one sentence. Would the PM respond, he asked, ‘to grave concerns about the nightmare unfolding at the Co-operative?’ Cameron pretended to be all serious. He fretted about the regulatory controls and about safeguarding the bank without fleecing the tax-payer. ‘Nightmare!’ goaded the Tories. Ed Balls, seated beside Miliband, flushed puce. Not a natural Trappist, the shadow chancellor is clearly under orders to shut his gob during PMQs.

It was a doddle for Ed Miliband at PMQs this afternoon. The nation watched agog yesterday as the energy companies deployed a handful of silk-lined suits to justify their price hikes to a parliamentary committee. Miliband arrived at the house knowing that victory was simple. He just had to fuse the Tories and Big Energy in the public mind and then sit back and enjoy the results. But he got ambushed by David Cameron who had a surprise document up his sleeve. Miliband’s fuel bill. First Cameron reminded us of his advice to consumers last week. ‘Switch your energy company and save £200.’ This idea had been instantly derided by

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