PMQs live blog | 19 October 2011
PMQs, 19 August 2011
Pmqs
Wednesday
Wednesday
Miliband attacks Cameron on jobs
Ed Miliband chose to ask all six questions on the economy today, making only the quickest of references to the Liam Fox story that the Westminster village is currently obsessing over. Armed with ammunition from the latest unemployment numbers, Miliband did a solid job of pushing Cameron onto the back foot. But there was one moment which will worry Miliband’s supporters: the spontaneous way the government benches fell about when Miliband claimed that Scottish and Southern Energy’s decision to start selling its electricity on the wholesale market was the result of his conference speech. Three Labour backbenchers did ask questions about Liam Fox. Cameron said he would look at publishing
PMQs live blog | 12 October 2011
PMQs, 12 August 2011
Wednesday
A brutal no score draw at PMQs
Cameron and Miliband went six rounds on the economy at PMQs. Miliband tried to portray Cameron as just another Tory who thinks that “unemployment is a price worth paying”. Cameron, for his part, wanted to paint the Labour leader as someone whose policies would send Britain tumbling into a sovereign debt crisis. At the end, it felt like a bit of a no-score draw. Interestingly, Cameron stressed that “every week and every month, we’ll be adding to that growth programme”. We’ll have to see whether he’s talking about more small-bore measures, or something bigger on infrastructure investment. Labour had a new tactic today, trying to fact-check all of Cameron’s answers
PMQs Live-blog | 14 September 2011
VERDICT: The 80,000 rise in unemployment announced today gave Ed Miliband an immediate tactical advantage and he made the most of it, damning the government’s economic policy and painting the coalition as uncaring Conservatives. He even cracked the odd risqué joke, such was his confidence. Cameron defended as best he could and he managed to avoid looking evasive, but the session was Miliband’s. However, despite this defeat and the dire economic outlook, Cameron need not panic yet. Miliband is still very weak on the economy: he is yet to provide any strategic direction on how to repair the public finances and promote sustainable growth. He also looks incoherent: yesterday he said that you can’t spend your way to a
Wednesday
A day like no other
Was there ever a PMQs like this? The mood was like a revolutionary court. On the central issue – the judge-led inquiry into the hacking affair – there was general agreement. But the doors of justice have been flung open at last and hosts of other crimes are rushing in to receive an airing. Ed Miliband arrived convinced that he had a killer question for Cameron. Assuming his favourite expression of indignant piety he asked about a specific warning given to Cameron’s chief of staff last February that Andy Coulson, when News of the World editor, had hired an ex-convict to bribe the cops. The effect was feeble rather than
News Corp withdraws its bid for BSkyB
Two things struck me about PMQs today and the Prime Minister’s statement on the forthcoming public inquiry. First, the Prime Minister took a very different approach to Andy Coulson than he did at his press conference last Friday. Today, all the emphasis was on how angry Cameron would be if the assurances given to him turned out to be false. The second was that Cameron rowed away from suggesting statutory regulation of the press. He stressed that he favoured ‘independent’ not ‘statutory regulation’. This should be more acceptable to the press. But, as so often in this scandal, these events have now been overtaken by the dramatic news
PMQs live | 13 July 2011
A change from the Coffee House norm for this last PMQs before the summer recess. Instead of the usual live-blog, we’ll be live-tweeting the session, and our tweets will appear in the special window below (you may be familiar with it from Guido’s PMQs coverage). Tweets from other political types may also appear. And you can add your own remarks to the live-stream not in the comments section, but in the space below the window. Anyway, it should all be fairly self-explanatory. It might work, it might not. In either case, do let us know what you think. End of term PMQS
Wednesday
Miliband takes the battle honours
Wow. That was a hell of a session. It shouldn’t have been but it was. A few days ago Mr Miliband seemed to be in the dog-house again. Fresh from his Ed Nauseam interview to a TV reporter – when he repeated the same soundbite on public sector strikes about 36 times in a row – he’d been stung by Lord Goldsmith’s complaint that he was failing to connect with the public. But salvation arrived in the shape of News International. The worse things smell at Wapping the rosier it all is for the opposition leader. PMQs today was easy. All he had to do was to appear suitably revolted
A beating, but not as harsh as it might have been
PMQs today was a taste for David Cameron of what he will have to face over the coming weeks as the scandal surrounding the News of the World continues to grow. Ed Miliband asked him whether he agreed that Rebekah Brooks — a friend of Cameron’s —should resign and then mocked him when he wouldn’t answer. The Labour leader than pushed him on whether News International should be stopped from taking over BSkyB and derided him when he said the matter was out of his hands. Finally, he slammed him for his decision to bring Andy Coulson — who had resigned as editor of the News of the World because
PMQs live blog | 6 July 2011
VERDICT: A crescendo of a PMQs, which started in sombre fashion but soon swelled into a vicious confrontation between the two leaders. It is strangely difficult to say who won, not least because both men had their moments. Ed Miliband’s persistent anger — including over Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB — will have chimed with public sentiment. But Cameron went further than expected by backing a public inquiry into the phone hacking affair, and without much equivocation either. In the end, though, I’d say Miliband probably came out on top, for seeming less on the side of News International. 1242: No surprises from Cameron’s statement on Afghanistan. It was, in
Westminster prepares for a day of News International
The cascade of News of the World stories has, this morning, become a deluge. On top of last night’s Andy Coulson news — which, as George Eaton points out, really oughtn’t be that surprising — we have the Indepedent claiming that Rebekah Brooks personally “commissioned searches” from one of the private investigators tangled up in the Milly Dowler affair. The Guardian reveals that Cabinet ministers are minded to establish a full review into both ownership and regulation of the media. And the Telegraph suggests that the bereaved families of those killed in the 7 July bombing may have had their phones targeted. “It is thought that journalists were seeking to
Tuesday
Labour make a public inquiry their cause
I briefly mentioned Ed Miliband’s assertive remarks about the News of the World earlier. But it is worth returning to the video, above, to highlight one of his specific demands. “A police inquiry needs to take place without fear of favour,” said the Labour leader, “and then we need a much wider inquiry to restore the reputation of British journalism.” Harriet Harman has since echoed this sentiment in Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions, urging the government to “act” and establish a public inquiry into the newspaper trade. So, only hours after Tom Watson berated his party leadership for their timidity on this front, a public inquiry appears to have become official
Wednesday
World battles narcolepsy as wonky Miliband opens up
Superwonk Ed was back today. For the third week running he tried to nobble Cameron at PMQs by taxing him on some miniscule detail of policy. ‘Of the 163 statutory organisations in the health service’, asked Miliband, ‘how many will be left after the government’s top-down reforms?’ Cameron hadn’t a clue. And even at this early stage a sense of resignation was settling over the watching thousands. Trying to kick the PM with a footling facticule doesn’t play with the general public. It rarely makes the news. It has commentators reaching for lines of speed to keep awake. And the only people it excites are the opposition leader’s all-star team
Cameron tries to turn Miliband’s microscope off
Having been stumped by Miliband’s focus on detail in the past two PMQs, Cameron came prepared today. He was determined to highlight the fact that the Labour leader wasn’t asking about the big picture. So after Miliband had asked a series of questions about the nuts and bolts of NHS reforms, Cameron used his final answer to launch into Miliband. ‘He can’t ask about strikes because he is in the pockets of the union’, he started. He rattled off a series of other great issues of the day on which Miliband was silent, building up towards his conclusion with the line‘ he has to talk about the micro because he
PMQs live-blog | 29 June 2011
VERDICT: Once again, Ed Miliband caught David Cameron out on an obscure point; this time about NHS reform. But, it was much too narrow a line of questioning and he had nothing to say on today’s other issues (Greece, Ken Clarke’s knife crime u-turn or tomorrow’s strikes etc.). Indeed, Labour was silent on the issue of tomorrow’s strikes and the economy. Cameron easily turned this to his advantage, painting Labour as being trapped in the pocket of the unions. Thus, was victory won from an awkward position. 12:30: Finally, a question Labour’s backbenchers about pension reform in the public sector, but it sounds like a half-hearted after-thought. Cameron defends his
Wednesday
Miliband’s myopia
The Prime Minister declared war at PMQs today. Not once but twice in the same sentence. ‘We’re at war in Libya and in Afghanistan,’ he said, in a throwaway footnote to some ritual noises about his ‘huge respect for our armed forces.’ Until this historic moment Britain had been engaged in peace-keeping and nation-building in Afghanistan, and in civilian protection and tyrant-bothering in Libya. But now it’s official. We’re mobilised on two fronts. Ed Miliband might have made more of this but he was too busy mentally preparing himself for this week’s shock ambush. This week’s shock ambush wasn’t quite as shocking as it might have been because it had
Devil in the detail
David Cameron is not a details man. He has always been more comfortable with the grand sweep than the nitty-gritty of policy. Ed Miliband, by contrast, is a natural-born policy wonk who is never more confident than when discussing detail. Miliband is trying to turn this to his advantage at PMQs and, for the second week in a row, succeeded in catching Cameron out on the details of government policy in an emotive area. Last week it was benefits for cancer sufferers, this week it was the retention of DNA from those arrested for, but not charged with, rape. The Prime Minister is a good enough performer at
PMQs live blog | 22 June 2011
VERDICT: Ed Miliband repeated the same tactic as last week, concentrating on a specific policy area to test Cameron’s command of the details — and again it had the desired effect, although not quite so tellingly as before. The Prime Minister floundered and generalised on the issue of rape arrests, but managed to turn some of his discomfort back on the Labour leader, and ended their exchange sounding more confident than perhaps he was. He was then consideraby more surefooted throughout the backbench questions, particularly when it came to public sector pensions and to attacking Labour’s unfunded VAT cut. But, on the whole, this was another session to relieve the
Wednesday
Ed’s not dead
Crafty old Ed. After a week on death row, he was expected to arrive at PMQs and do the decent thing. Drink down a foaming cup of hemlock and depart the political stage for good. But Ed is made of sterner stuff than many of us realised. He was cunning, passionate and articulate today and his performance will have steadied the nerves of his anxious troops. It all began oddly. As soon as Miliband stood up he was greeted by a slightly over-done chorus of cheers from his backbenchers. This absurdity prompted a burst of satirical catcalling from the Tories. They knew this would be fun. Cameron would run rings
