Lloyd Evans

A fascinating PMQs. Labour staged one of the most carefully orchestrated attacks on David Cameron they’ve ever mounted. It was relentless. Ed Miliband kicked off by asking the PM about the six fold rise in food-bank dependency. Cheekily, Cameron praised Miliband for applauding the volunteer spirit. ‘It’s what I call the Big Society.’ Miliband gave him the ‘withering disbelief’ look which he practises in the mirror. He then revealed that two out of every three teachers ‘know a colleague’ who has given food or cash to famished children. Cameron shrugged this aside and replied that he wanted to do the most for the poorest.

PMQs today revealed just how dependent Ed Miliband is on Britain’s future performance. The public finances have shaped his entire career. In government, he watched Gordon Brown screw the economy. Then he watched the economy return the compliment. Now he hopes the economy will wreck the Coalition and propel him into Downing Street. But there’s a snag. The economy has to tank, and to carry on tanking, for Miliband’s Mission Zero to succeed. And today, in defiance of all the soothsayers, the economic news is good. Employment figures are rising. Nearly 30 million Britons are in work. And those tricky youth unemployment totals are moving into sunny territory too. Ed Miliband, the political vulture, will starve without fresh corpses on the savannah.

From our sub-arctic chancellor this was a rip-roaring performance. Using all the arts perfected by Gordon Brown, he dazzled the house with his Autumn Statement. A chancellor should never be entirely candid. His job is to blame others for failure, to take credit for all successes, (no matter what their true origin), to engender confidence in the future and to attract cautious applause. George Osborne did all this. The bad news came out first. There were sharp intakes of breath as he revealed that the economy had shrunk by 6.9 per cent during the credit crunch. And he offered a personal confession which, in accordance with tradition, was masked in flowery statistical language.

The conference platform was surrounded by screens tinted a deep and easeful blue. At just after 1.30 pm, Lord Leveson ambled forth, sporting a white shirt, a grey suit and a slight stoop. He peered out at the assembled pack of journalists from beneath his curmudgeonly black eyebrows. Then he sat at his desk. Microphones at either end bowed towards him like praying mantises. He began to speak. His quiet voice and his dense, circuitous prose suggest that he’s used to being listened to in awed silence. So he was. Occasionally he slowed the pace and upped the volume suddenly. A court-room device, perhaps, to jog a dozy juror awake. ‘The press, operating freely,’ he intoned, ‘is one of the true safeguards of our democracy.

While Leveson packs his sun-cream and flip-flops and prepares for a holiday in Australia, the nation holds its breath in anticipation of his report. One lucky citizen, the prime minister, is permitted a sneak glance at the findings of the great inquisitor into press malpractice. At 11.45 this morning, the monumental hardback landed with a thump on Number 10’s doormat. David Cameron barely had time to turn to the index and see how many name-checks he’d been given before he was whisked off to the Commons to answer questions from Ed Miliband. It was not a great occasion. The opposition leader challenged Cameron on the failure of the Work Programme, (b. June 2011), to terminate long-term unemployment. Reports yesterday revealed that just 3.

A muted PMQs today. But Cameron opened a fresh offensive which may prove to be a blunder. The leaders began by discussing the Gaza crisis in bland and soporific tones. The absence of heat and noise from the debate indicates how little it affects Britain. And how little Britain affects the debate. Cameron and Miliband were in virtual agreement throughout. And they were keen to urge everyone, other than themselves, to work harder to create peace. Cameron suggested that Obama should make the Middle-East a key objective of his second-term, just as one might make weeding the raspberries a key objective of the coming weekend. Miliband noted that ‘confidence in the two-state solution is dwindling.

With the prime minister abroad flogging jets to tyrants, Nick Clegg was left to play the statesman at PMQs. He was opposed by Labour’s Harriet Harman. Once a plucky and hard-working performer, Harman is now entering her Elvis-in-Vegas phase. She can remember the words but can’t find the feeling. She accused the Lib Dem leader of various atrocities. Sacking policemen. Doing the dirty on tuition fees. Vandalising the Surestart scheme. Nobbling mums with extra taxes. But her meandering phrases were so vaguely scripted, and so feebly delivered, that she might as well have stitched them into a sewing sampler. Clegg had all the time in the world to sharpen up a few hurtful replies. He demanded that Harman apologise for Labour’s ‘no more boom and bust’ promise.

Ed Miliband had fun with his dressing-up box today. At PMQs he tried on all kinds of disguises in the hope of scaring the government. First Europe and the EU budget negotiations. Miliband’s approach here is full of cunning and dishonesty. He called for ‘real terms reduction’ even though he knows full well that a freeze is the best the government can hope for. But by suggesting an impossible tactic he can claim that David Cameron has missed a trick. ‘Rank opportunism,’ declared the PM, ‘and the country will see through it.’ He reminded us of Labour’s record at the negotiating table seven years ago. Back then Ed Milband and his colleagues were happy to pitchfork great flapping bales of cash onto the EU money-pyre.