PMQs sketch: Harman shoots at an empty goal
Harriet Harman gave Nick Clegg a good little kicking today. It’s hard to miss when there’s no-one between you and the goal.
By Ian Dunt
He’s turned into quite a competent Commons performer nowadays, our Nick Clegg. But there’s no way he’s going to be able to counter a full-blown tuition fees attack. It’s like asking me to play the whole Chelsea squad at once. It’s just not doable.
Harriet Harman, whose reputation for parliamentary blood-letting took something of a battering when she took over during the Labour leadership election, made quick work of the Liberal Democrat leader at the dispatch box. Both were standing in for their respective bosses, but it must have been Harman who gasped with glee when she realised the contest would coincide with the student demonstration hitting Westminster today.
In politics.co.uk’s office next to Big Ben, you can hear the chanting and just about make out the spontaneous sit-down protests going on outside. On the news, they are showing images of activists smashing the windows of Tory HQ just down the road in Millbank. But the chamber blocks out noise from outside, in more ways than one.
Harman started with an easy brutality. All very predictable but nevertheless rather enjoyable. “In April this year, the deputy prime minister said that it was his aim to end university tuition fees,” she said. “Can he update the House on how his plan is progressing?”
Clegg tried something about difficult decisions, but it wasn’t going to work. He was confident, but long-winded. There’s a kind of Zen to him since he entered government that startles observers. It’s not that he’s unaffected. If things continue, he will probably lose his constituency at the next election. It’s as if he’s made up his mind that he can’t afford to show any care, or else the whole thing falls apart. He might be right.
Harman issued her second attack. “I’m glad he thinks it’s so fair. Perhaps he’ll tell that to all the students and lecturers marching on Westminster today. In April he said increasing tuition fees to £7,000 a year would be a disaster. What word he use to describe fees on £9,000?”
And on it went. Harman was snide, cynical, dry, humorous and effective in equal measure. Then she told a joke, a rather good joke as it goes, about freshers’ week. “This is about him going along with a Tory plan to shove the costs of universities onto students and their families. We all know what it’s like. You’re at freshers’ week. You meet up with a dodgy bloke and do things that you regret. He’s being led astray by the Tories.”
It was all very good, frankly. Clegg tried to use that nasty parliamentary labour party meeting on Monday night against her – when Labour MPs attacked her for disowning Phil Woolas – but it was to no avail. He was flustered and he fluffed his lines a little. He bleated a bit about Labour not having a policy on the issue.
He’s entirely correct of course. They really don’t. Try asking a Labour press officer about the graduation tax – ostensibly still official policy – and they seem to dribble away, like ice cream in the sun.
But Clegg’s position is simply untenable. It wasn’t just some manifesto commitment. It was a major plank of the Liberal Democrats’ agenda. His decision not to just abstain from the vote feels like a massive error, and one that will probably end up costing the Lib Dems everything. And for what? They had already secured a right to abstain in the coalition agreement.
He desperately tried a line about the frightful state of the economy left by Labour, but again it was useless. He was the personification of an open goal. Harman has no particular football skills, but she can dribble and shoot like Didier Drogba when there’s no one between her and the posts.
