Pmqs

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Miliband to keep pressing on with his NHS attacks

The last PMQs before recess gives Ed Miliband a chance to have another go at the coalition’s NHS reforms. I suspect that the ‘Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot’ quote that appeared in Rachel Sylvester’s column (£) will make an appearance at some point.   Miliband will keep going on the NHS because he knows it is one of the Tories’ biggest vulnerabilities and one of the few subjects on which Cameron isn’t confident attacking. Based on past performance, any PMQs where the focus is on NHS reform will produce at least a score draw for the Labour leader.   But I still don’t expect Cameron to move

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband finds his niche, and leaves Cameron looking boorish

Miliband is getting the measure of PMQs. Not with respect to Cameron. With respect to himself. He’s learned that his strongest register — sanctimony — will always ring hollow unless it’s attached to a powerful cause. And his gags don’t work. So he’s ditched his team of funny men and wise-crackers and turned to his political instincts instead. Miliband’s gut worked today. He began with a question which he knew Cameron couldn’t answer. Why hasn’t the government activated the laws requiring banks to name all employees earning over a million year? The PM answered by not answering. He performed a transparent switcheroo from the particular question to the general topic.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories push benefit cap in PMQs, Miliband ignores it

As expected, the Tories did everything they could to make the benefit cap the subject of PMQs. One Tory MP managed to slip in a question on it just before Miliband got up, allowing Cameron to press the Labour leader on the issue even before he had started speaking. Tory MPs kept coming back to the benefit cap — there were five questions on it in all — allowing Cameron to repeatedly mock the Labour front bench for not saying what its position is. ‘Just nod — are you with us or against us?’ was one of the lines Cameron tried to goad them with. But in the main clashes

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The battle for ‘fairness’ continues

Today’s PMQs will be another skirmish in the battle for fairness. All three parties know that there is no more potent word in British politics at the moment than fairness and they all want to be its champion. But what will make PMQs interesting today is that Cameron and Miliband each have a powerful weapon in the fairness debate, but also a vulnerability. Miliband’s weapon is bankers’ bonuses – the government’s inaction over Stephen Hester’s bonus has given him plenty of material. But he’s acutely vulnerable over the benefits cap. Cameron will be desperate to move the debate onto this territory. All the polling shows that Labour’s desire to have

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband delivers for once, but Cameron’s left unharmed

Incredible events in the chamber today. An absolute sensation at PMQS. For the first time since last summer, Ed Miliband got through the session without triggering talk of a leadership crisis. There was gloomy news aplenty to dwell on. Debts soaring; growth flat-lining; dole queues snaking back through blighted high streets and bankrupt business parks. The Labour leader chose to wallop Cameron with a well-prepared attack on the NHS. Quoting the prime minister’s vow, ‘to take our nurses and doctors with us’, he asked why the government had stopped listening. The prime minister’s reply was frivolous and desperate. He giggled and smirked like a teenager at the despatch box and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Both leaders left smiling after PMQs

Today was one of those PMQs when you sensed that both sides were fairly happy with how it had gone. Ed Miliband turned in one of his stronger performances, cleverly splitting his questions and so allowing himself to have a go at both the economy and the coalition’s troubled NHS reforms. Cameron, for his part, got through what was always going to be a difficult session for him after this morning’s negative growth numbers.   Strikingly, there were four planted Tory questions on the benefits cap. The Tories know that Labour’s vote against it compounds one of their biggest vulnerabilities, the sense they are the party for people on benefits

Wednesday

Camilla Swift

Cameron’s fight over the Falklands

Thirty years on from the Falklands War, and the hostility between Britain and Argentina persists. And it was that hostility that delivered the most striking moment of PMQs earlier. Not only did David Cameron, at the insistence of Andrew Rosindell, describe the Argentinian attitude towards the Islands as ‘far more like colonialism’ than that of the British, but he also confirmed that the National Security Council yesterday discussed the simmering situation in the south Atlantic. As he put it himself, he wants to send out a ‘strong message’ to Argentina, after the recent sabre-rattling actions of their President, Cristina Kirchner — which Daniel has blogged about here. The question that’s

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The lesson from today’s PMQs? Unemployment makes Cameron uncomfortable

What’s the point of Ed Miliband? Does the Opposition leader have any purpose in life other than to provide ritual entertainment for the Tory wrecking crew at PMQs? Having spent the New Year listening to lethal attacks from his dearest supporters, Mr Miliband has now seen his leadership shrivel to a pair of policy statements which rival each other in desperation and barminess. The first, outlined by Liam Byrne this morning, is a fantasy tax on banking, ‘to create 100,000 jobs’. The second is Labour’s new position on the government’s austerity programme. This would baffle the dippiest and trippiest resident of Alice in Wonderland. We hate the cuts. We back

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron endures his monthly unemployment grilling

Downing Street is painfully aware that one PMQs in four is going to be about unemployment. Today, with the monthly figures having come out this morning, Miliband led on the subject. The Cameron-Miliband exchanges were not particularly enlightening. Miliband said ‘it really is back to the 1980s’ and Cameron mocked Miliband for being ‘so incompetent, he can’t even do a U-turn properly’. In the backbench questions, Cameron wasn’t put under much pressure. The news of the session came when he said in response to a question from Andrew Rosindell that the National Security Council had devoted a whole session to the Falklands yesterday. At the end of the session, there

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Why Ed Miliband’s PMQs slip-up matters

The exchange about rail fares in PMQs earlier was, it’s true, not one for the photo album. But the way it’s resolved itself this afternoon has been considerably more diverting. You see, it turns out that David Cameron was right: Labour did arrange for these fare increases when in government. And, what’s more, Ed Miliband was wrong: the coalition didn’t ‘reverse’ the cap on fares that Labour then conveniently introduced in the run up to the general election. That cap was limited to one year by the Labour government itself. It was always intended that it would expire on 1 January 2011, at which point — barring a new cap

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Ed Miliband lives to flop another day

Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche issue. Rail fares. He asked the prime minister why the operating companies have managed to hike prices by 11 per cent on the busiest routes. Cameron: ‘Because of a power given to them by the last Labour government.’   With that lethally terse response the PM sat down. To his credit, Miliband wasn’t rattled. But

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A fairly bland PMQs

Today’s PMQs was rather a bland affair. Ed Miliband started with three questions on train fares that David Cameron batted away, but there is a little row brewing over whether Cameron’s claim that he is simply continuing the policy of the last government is correct. Later, Miliband moved onto the safe territory of the Union and consensus broke out with only the half dozen SNP MPs dissenting from it. Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, then asked the PM a question that, in a preview of the SNP’s campaign tactics, was designed purely to get the words Cameron, Thatcher and Scotland into the same sentence. There were two other things

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Miliband use his lifeline in PMQs?

At the weekend, Tories were anticipating giving Ed Miliband an almighty kicking at PMQs. Lord Glasman’s description of Labour’s economic record as ‘all crap’ had given them a killer line. As one member of the Cameron circle joked to me, ‘we’ve never had more material to work with.’    But Ed Miliband now has a get out of jail free card. If he asks six questions about the Union and the referendum, it will be impossible for Cameron to have a pop at him without looking distinctly unstatesmanlike. On Scotland, the two leaders need each other. The Unionist side cannot win without the Labour party and the Labour party will

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Who’s right on public v private employment?

If you listened to PMQs yesterday, then you’ll have heard two very different accounts of what’s happening in the labour market right now. Had Ed Miliband been able to get anyone’s attention, they’d have heard him say: ‘over the last three months, for every job being created in the private sector, thirteen are being lost in the public sector.’ Cameron’s response: ‘Since the election, in the private sector there have been 581,000 extra jobs. In the public sector, he’s right, we have lost 336,000 jobs.’ According to the Labour leader’s figures, public sector losses are far greater than private sector growth. But according to Cameron’s, the private sector is more

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband crumples to a new low in PMQs

Inept, useless, incompetent, maladroit, hopeless, clumsy, crap. With thesaurus-rifling regularity Ed Miliband comes to PMQs and delivers a performance which is inept, useless, incompetent, maladroit, hopeless, clumsy and crap. The only virtue the Labour leader has is consistency. He’s consistently worse than last week. In theory he should have scored some damage today. Unemployment is soaring. Growth seems grounded. Cabinet ‘partners’ scuffle in public whenever they get the chance, and Nick Clegg changes his mind as often as he changes his socks. And Miliband’s tactics had some merit too. By disinterring the PM’s New Year Statement from January 2011 he was able to open up the Coalition’s wounds and have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron pummels Miliband in PMQs

Today, was yet another reminder that David Cameron knows just where to hit Ed Miliband to make it hurt. After a few questions on the economy, Miliband moved to Europe — the coalition’s greatest vulnerability. Miliband joked that it was ‘good to see the deputy Prime Minister back in his place’, before mocking the coalition’s divisions over Europe. Cameron began his reply by saying it was no surprise Tories and Lib Dems don’t agree on Europe before saying that the split on the issue could be exaggerated: ‘it’s not like we’re brothers or anything,’ Cameron said in his most mocking tone. At this line you could see the Labour benches