Winner:
Luke Akehurst: My feeling is that Cameron’s strident style wins in the macho arena of the House itself, but on TV just looks aggressive and un-statesmanlike. Brown is adopting a more restrained style that will work better in the TV debates.
Rachel Reeves: Gordon Brown for staying calm throughout
Will Parbury: Presentationally I think Cameron has the better half hour. Gordon would have known BA/Unite was coming up and the lines he came up with were not delivered well enough. Cameron was being so opportunistic I just wanted to rub his face in a wet fish but it took too long for Brown to get around to saying that Cameron was provoking the dispute. Gordon was right on the substance of encouraging dialogue between BA and Unite but being right isn’t to helpful if you can’t shove Cameron’s opportunism right back in his smug face.
Best joke or comment:
LA: Cameron’s “when is the right time for a strike that threatens the future?” of BA question was his sharpest moment.
RR: Cameron on Unite funding quipping, they are “paid to shout” at heckling Labour MPs. Funny, if tedious.
WP: Could John Redwood be a Labour Party plant to make the Tories look even weirder than they manage themselves? Anyway his question this week was a gift to heckling Labour backbenchers “Where has RBS’s £700bn gone?” Labour backbenchers “Lord Ashcroft!”
Best backbencher:
LA: Lindsay Hoyle for getting airtime for a genuine issue of pensioners being scammed; Tony Baldry for extracting a rare correction from the PM.
RR: Chris McCafferty on maternal mortality. I went last week to a dinner for International Women’s Day where the funding went to support a hospital in Ethiopia which supports mothers through pregnancy. It is unacceptable that women still die preventable deaths in pregnancy and childbirth and Gordon Brown’s international leadership on this is making a difference.
WP: Tony Baldry got his question in about Brown needing to correct what he had previously said about growth in real terms of defence expenditure. There haven’t been many questions over the years where backbenchers get a PM to correct what they have previously said.
Implications:
LA: Cameron’s accusations of Labour going “back to the ‘70s” don’t hold much water and are meaningless to anyone under 50 years old. In fact his own stance on the BA dispute appears to be a throwback to high Thatcherism and confrontation with the unions. Brown did well to highlight the contrast with recent Tory efforts to triangulate by reaching out to union audiences. Union-bashing is a very dangerous path to follow as we go into a period of difficult decisions about public services. For him to take sides in this particular dispute is bizarre – BA cabin crew are hardly the NUM’s flying pickets, they are a traditionally very pro-company group of workers who have been presented with changes to their remuneration package and working conditions that have pushed them beyond endurance.
All this suggests that the Tories are looking at some very “back to the future” election themes – attacking Labour as soft on defence and the unions – because the policies they have to address the real economic and public service policy issues facing the UK are being shown by the narrowing polls to be deeply unpopular.
RR: One thing that I found interesting is that Tory backbenchers who should have made more of an impact – I’m thinking particularly of John Redwood and Nicholas Winterton – failed to lay a punch on GB. Focusing on the economy plays to Labour’s strengths and gives Gordon Brown a chance to set out what Labour has done to support the economy through the recession – especially for small businesses.
Similarly, Simon Hughes’s question on pensions gave GB a chance to talk about what Labour has done on pensioner poverty and for female pensioners and for the NHS.
Like Luke, I think that this all bodes well for the leadership debates. Gordon was relaxed with the questions and not aggressive which works much better with the public. He also looks like and sounds like he is genuinely proud of Labour’s achievements, particularly on poverty. For him it is not just a game which frankly is what it looks like to the Tories much of the time.
The union-bashing stuff is obviously amusing the Tories as they retreat in to their comfort zone. But, all the serious analysis of who Unite support and its impact on policy ruins the Tory ‘militant tendency’ story – and all the serious commentary (Today, R4 for example), makes that clear. I joined the MSF when I was seventeen, it then became Amicus and now Unite. I am a proud member of Unite, but we are a broad church with members in virtually every sector. Unite members do not all think the same or follow a line, but, when we need the support of our unions, as I did in my last job, they were there for me. The BA strike is an industrial dispute. The Tories are agitating for a fight and as a result will make it harder to resolve the problems. It is not responsible, it is opportunistic.
WP: Labour are going to continue to beat the Tories with Ashcroft and the Tories needed to respond. That they resort to union bashing is not a shock just desperate . Indeed I suspect the “modern” Tory party is an 80s re-enactment society. Sometimes it’s the 1980s, sometimes it’s the 1880s. Now we’re moving into full election mode there is going to be a lot of heat and not a lot of light. Gordon has to realise he needs to do work to come out of the TV debates well. He needs to be dynamic and direct and not stumble over his lines or to put it another way get in Cameron’s face.