PMQs as-it-happened
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11:15 – Just under an hour until the session begins and it’s about time to make some predictions. The first two subjects which spring to mind are, yes, the snow, and the Lindsey wildcat strike, but neither offer David Cameron much ammunition. Gordon Brown can’t be held responsible for local councils’ preparation for snowfall, or he’d have no time to do anything. On the other hand, the wildcat strike is dangerous territory for politicians. Cameron might use it to make a point on the EU, although his new shadow business secretary Ken Clarke may have a thing or two to say about that. An angry tirade against allowing foreign workers to undercut British wages may play well in the press, but it risks associating him with a strike which some sections of the middle class are uncomfortable with because its national overtones. And then there’s the natural aversion Tories have associating themselves with wildcat strikes. It would be a balancing act, but Cameron has proved himself competent at navigating these sorts of issues before.
12:00 – The prime minister enters the Commons. He pays his condolences to a British soldier killed in Afghanistan. The first question is on snow. Surprisingly quick. What will the PM do to help families worried about their fuel bill this winter? Brown pays tribute to the emergency services through the snowstorm. He then switches to data reeling – battering his way through an endless list of policies and numbers in a way that makes my brain go wrong.
12:02 – Cameron is up. He asks Brown whether he agrees the last thing we need is for the US to retreat into protectionism. Evidently David Miliband didn’t yesterday. Brown says he’s made it clear he doesn’t like protectionism for years, and especially during the financial crisis. He wants the world to coordinate on a monetary and fiscal stimulus.
12:04 – Cameron urges action on the US and India before the Doha trade round. Brown says there’s progress, and proceeds to spell it out. It’s now up for Obama and the Indian prime minister to move on with what’s been done so far.
12:05 – Cameron is not being particularly hostile. Isn’t the PM encouraging protectionist sentiment? Does he regret the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’? Cameron says it showed a lack of judgement. Very interesting. “Can anyone here say they don’t want British workers to have jobs in their country?” Brown replies. It’s a regrettable thing to say, because it entirely misrepresents the question. There’s a minor uproar in the Commons.
12:07 – The slogan was “opportunistic, protectionist and pandering to people’s fears, and he knows it,” Cameron says. Loud cheers. More uproar. Cameron goes on to describe the slogan as a call for employment apartheid. Angry and effective now, Cameron calls on the PM to apologise for it. Strong stuff, actually. Brown says Cameron is more opportunistic because he didn’t keep on supporting the government over the financial crisis.
12:09 – Cameron says Brown has been found out using anti-protectionist noises abroad but ‘British jobs for British workers’ stuff at home. Brown goes into the detail of the strike. He says new advice from a construction association on non-UK contractors asks for them to consider UK applicants first. Cameron is now the one substituting rhetoric for substance, reeling off a list of Brown contradictions. But he devastates the PM with a call for him to turn around and see how uncomfortable his own backbenchers are with the phrase. Cameron’s indignation, real or not, is very convincing. He asks Brown to apologise again. Brown says: “The biggest error of judgement would be to do nothing in this downturn.” God, that was bad. The question really truly had nothing to do with that. He accuses Cameron of talking Britain down – “and he should be ashamed of himself”.
12:13 – The Labour benches look very glum indeed. Clegg gets up to speak. Week after week he’s been asking the PM why he doesn’t get tough on tax avoidance, he says. Now the media has revealed the tricks of corporations. “Instead of going on about British jobs for British workers shouldn’t he be going on about British tax for British companies?”
12:15 – Brown did actually answer that one, but Clegg says he’s “living in denial”. He accuses the PM of orchestrating a system whereby the fat cats have one rule and everyone else has another. Brown savages Clegg with the point that the main donor to the Lib Dems was done for tax avoidance and the party never returned the money. Brown says tax avoidance measures have to come through international action.
12:16 – For the record, it’s impossible to overstate the length of Jack Straw’s face. David Miliband looks serious, grave, and utterly forgettable. Alan Johnson appears angry about something, staring at the floor and biting his lip. Maybe it’s the way his (vaguely) strike-sympathetic comments over the weekend have been stamped into the dirt by the PM.
12:19 – There are a great many local issues coming up, which I’m sparing you. Behind a backbench Tory MP, former leader Michael Howard lives up to his reputation of having “something of the night about him”. Leaning awkwardly forwards, he eyes up her back with a sort of subdued violence.
12:21 – The reason there’s no jobs for British workers isn’t to do with European workers, it’s to do with capitalism, a backbench Tory MP says. Just joking, he was Labour. Does the PM agree? Brown says the financial markets need reform, which isn’t the same thing at all.
12:22 – A Tory MP points out the faces of the Labour benches to the prime minister. He really is right to do so. They haven’t looked like this since last summer, when Wednesdays were the weekly ‘watch the prime minister get flogged by his Tory counterpart’ day. We’re quickly getting to that point again, with Cameron thumping Brown on a very regular basis now. The PM’s performance hasn’t noticeably improved since last week, when it was very bad.
12:25 – Will Brown call for the Israelis to open up access to the Gaza Strip for humanitarian aid? Yes, Brown says. Apparently he’s already written to Israeli leaders calling for the crossing to opened immediately. It’s very refreshing hearing him answer a question. OK, he’s a little better than last week. A little bit.
12:27 – A Welsh MP asks a question so long and tedious I briefly consider tearing out my own eyes. A question on how much council tax goes towards local authority pensions. “Nice work if you can get it, Mr Speaker,” a Tory MP says, along with some shrill comments about a national pension “outrage”. Brown mentions it’s a Tory council he’s talking about and says most local authority workers don’t get absurd sums.
12:30 – I’m woken only by the extraordinary sycophancy of a Labour MP, whose question to Brown – loosely based on bus services – is whether it would be wise for a person to vote Labour “at every available opportunity”. A new question: will the PM invite the Tory economic team and that of the Lib Dems to Downing Street to work together? Brown says he’s sorry there’s so little common ground and wants to work together but those (LYING!) Tories decided against it. And that’s a wrap. The session is most notable for how firm Cameron was against the strike – through the side-route of his comments on Brown’s slogan. It’s wry stuff from Cameron, who is so concerned with photo-ops and media opportunities that it’s reassuring to see him plant his flag to a position which isn’t popular in the country.
