PMQs sketch: Backfiring jokes leave little impression
It doesn’t matter if David Cameron got his facts wrong. The new prime minister was the effortless winner against an utterly ineffectual Harriet Harman.
These first prime minister’s questions of the new parliament are disappointingly tepid affairs. The thundering clunking of Gordon Brown, now referred to as the “right hon member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath”, is but a memory. In his place Harman bleats like a sheep on Prozac.
When offered an opening, Harman comprehensively failed to take advantage. Cameron had said claimant count numbers were down, but the International Labour Organisation’s measure of employment was up 23,000. Harman insisted ILO employment was down on the previous month.
Had Brown made such a slip the opposition would have been all over him. But Harman merely carped plaintively in response, despite the studied calm of Cameron’s panic as he glanced desperately from ministers to his notes and back again. There was no withering one-liner; instead the biggest cheer she roused from those sitting behind her followed an oft-repeated jibe. “I can answer his question although to be fair he’s the one who should be answering the questions!” she said, in what must be the least original line possible for a leader of the opposition to utter.
Harman’s prize joke was a real howler (and not in a good way). “It’s not so much magic numbers, it’s a magic roundabout!” she said proudly, with the air of a five-year-old displaying her masterpiece. The government benches groaned with agony. William Hague put his hand to his shaking forehead as he laughed, exuding contemptuous pity.
Cameron lobbed his response into the fray with the greatest of ease, informing the Commons he thought Labour’s leadership debates were beginning to look like “a Star Trek convention”. The comparison is apt: all the candidates have turned their back on Gordon ‘Klingon’ Brown.
You see? Bad joke syndrome is sweeping Westminster. For some reason it’s ok to be off-form after a general election. Maybe we all need a holiday.
The prime minister’s best line came near the end of the session, when a studiously loyal question from Tory backbencher Harriett Baldwin attracted scorn from Labour MPs. “It’s the rule of the House that government backbenchers support the government, it’s not that unusual,” Speaker John Bercow pointed out.
“Mr Speaker, I remember you did that very well,” Cameron said sharply in reply. Bercow grinned sourly as the Commons roared with mirth. Perhaps he was realising he has found his role as a unifying figure in parliament: everyone can laugh at him. A shame, then, that Harman’s lack of spark is no joke.
