Who won?
Paul Richards: Overall: a Cameron win on points, in a bad-tempered pre-election PMQs.
Rupa Huq: On argument Gordon Brown. The Tories have U-turned on their support for this policy so Cameron hasn’t got a leg to stand on. He just struck me as a nasty bully-boy. Nor Nick Clegg, he was almost swatted away like an irrelevant fly. His point on armed services and nurses pay might have made more sense if there was a Lib Dem policy pledge to back it up.
Hopi Sen: Who won? A draw. Tactics – Cameron spending all six questions on social care. Did poorly in first half – since he’d supported the bill, he looked silly. Did better on demanding a denial on social care levy, but the PM was never going to rule out a proposal out for consultation. Shouty and angry and confusing to everyone.
Best backbencher?
PR: Plug of the day was from Gordon Prentice when he asked “Has the PM visited GordonPrenticeMP.com today?” It led to a question about Ashcroft money funding Tory campaigns. Prentice had a good line: “Pendle is not for sale”. Brown went straight into an attack over Lord Ashcroft.
RH: I was going to agree with Paul that the shameless plugging of gordonprentice.com, highlighting how Ashcroft buy seats was class, as was the apoplectic “Pendle is not for sale”. However, seeing as it’s already been said I’d go for Douglas Carswell supporting the then chancellor Brown’s decision to stay out of the Euro.
HS: Best Backbencher – Douglas Carswell, a euro-obsessive, asked an interesting question about Greece, and got a response that made it clear that the government wasn’t interesting in helping the Greeks. But the winner was Gordon Prentice, with his website plug and clever raising of the Ashcroft issue.
Best comment or joke?
PR: “They’re the first opposition party to run out of ideas before they’ve been elected” was a good Brown line: a sign of Campbell’s help with PMQ prep, I wonder?
RH: I have to say it wasn’t Cameron talking about “too many bananas” (although that was achingly contrived to win laughs) or “no time for a novice” which I used to like but didn’t sound as great as the first time today. I actually think it was the speaker with his “simmer down”, “members are too over-excited today” and the “decibel level is too high”. As someone for whom classroom control is a daily reality I felt on his side. Though Brown’s line “I know how much he hates Punch and Judy politics” was not bad either.
HS: None. A valiant effort from The PM on Cameron’s inconsistency, and Cameron’s tried a gag about bananas, but this was a shouting match, not a comedy show.
Review – what does it mean for the campaign?
PR: David Cameron obviously feels he’s onto a winner with the ‘death tax’ attack, lifted straight out of the Frank Luntz lexicon and the Sarah Palin playbook. Cameron is aided by the noises of attacking the policy, especially the Labour council leaders and Lords Lipsey and Warner. Cameron accused Brown of wanting to talk about the benefits before the election, and the costs after the election.
Cameron scored a point or two by pointing out that Gordon Brown referred to a white paper, when in reality it is a green paper, and he had it with him to wave around at the Dispatch Box. It made Brown look underbriefed. Indeed Brown referred to ‘the poll tax’ at one point when he meant council tax, which was a little odd.
Cameron’s attack is backed up by the Tory tombstone posters, which remind me of the ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ poster campaign in the 1980s.
Brown’s answer on Blair and Chilcot was fascinating, revealing that Blair wrote to the families of those bereaved by the wars Iraq and Afghanistan.
RH: Very little really. It may be clipped for the evening news bulletins when normal people get home from work but let’s face it no-one really pays any attention to PMQs apart from hacks like us. Hague routinely ‘won’ against Blair but 2001 was pretty much groundhog day in terms of the general election result vis-a-vis the high watermark of 1997.
HS: What does it mean for the campaign? Well, it means that every PMQs is going to be noisy!
On the substance – the Tories will try and run the ‘Death Tax’ scare – but I don’t think it’ll really work. It’s too confusing, and the proposal isn’t substantial enough. Andy Burnham will close this down soon, I suspect.
More interestingly, I think we can see the emerging narratives on the party leaders – Cameron will claim Brown is divisive, self interested, ignores advice and is generally unpleasant. Brown will claim that that Cameron is all over the place on policy, says what people want to hear, and changes his mind when it’s politically convenient.
I think that’s more dangerous for Cameron, because while they’re both negative attacks, the attack on Cameron actually involves policy issues, while Cameron’s attack on Brown is purely personal. Since I don’t think people have a high opinion of politicians at the moment, that doesn’t achieve much.
