Who won?
Not really a vintage PMQs. However, Ed Miliband asked sharp pointed questions with a theme of the PM being ‘out of touch’ and gaining a reputation for incompetence. Libya was a good example, though it felt a little tenuous using police cuts too. David Cameron used his responses to make more digs about David Miliband and remind people that Labour would have cut police budgets too, and Ed could have made more of the difference in scale. Cameron was also wrong about ACPO: they did predict 12,000 police officer posts will go, plus 16,000 other posts.
In the end, a win for Ed Miliband for being sharp and on the right theme. Cameron was not really on best form. Ed also had the best line – ‘he may act as if he was born to rule, but he’s not very good at it.’
Best backbencher?
Best backbencher is Paul Goggins for pushing Cameron into committing to an alternative child trust fund or child ISA, the abolition of which was one of the more foolish early acts of the coalition.
Actually Cameron has finally found the message that may well win him the next General Election. So we are in big trouble. As I stated earlier there would be just criteria (not easy ones) to meet to win the General Election and Cameron has identified them. David Millibands comments seem, after some thought to be rather odd as I am sure many people were trying to communicate to him, to his colleagues and to the last Government as a whole what was required to not lose the last General Election. The ideas were always out there but many were simply unwilling to hear it. The Left does indeed have to change because the “kinder Conservatism” will bite us again and again until we actually get our message across which is a simple one. Thi may now be a lost opportunity however as we are no longer in power. Missing opportunities was something we turned into an art form and still continue to do. Cameron’s message was clear, that for too long we have relied on an economy reliant on Finance, Immigration, Housing etc and which now needs to be focused on exports, manufacturing, technology. The Left of course never lost it’s ideas, David Milliband was wrong, fundamentally the worries of the Left about the Economy were legitimate as these were their concerns being voiced consistently from before Tony Blair was PM. The Right has simpy recognised an intelligent public real concerns and recognised the key to defeating the Left in the UK by seizing their political position . Cameron realised an economic truth and acted upon it in the full knowledge that it is hitting the head of the nail. This is the price we pay as a Party in not having faith in the Left and the Center (not the Right). Remember loads of idle scroungers on the dole are great targets for opportunistic MP’s concerned with short term polls, but who put these people there? The whole position of our Party in Parliament with its economic credentials now comes into question. Because we should have attempted to address these major issues and we should have focused on building up the economy wholistically rather than worship one part of it. This would have been popular, it would have been a great step forward that is in everyones business. Fix the economy THEN fix welfare. Not FIX Welfare and hope the economy casts a magic spell. The Tory weakness depends on their ability to deliver then until our Party finds an effective narrative. Remember David Cameron is not after short-term public popularity, he is after respect. Public respect based upon consistent economic credibility as long as re-building, re-balancing, re-structuring, growing and devloping the economy are his aims and goals thereis nothing to stop him. The very anti-welfare message advocated by our MP’s will be used by the Tories to feed our destruction by spreading it out across all public service sectors, Cameron will out-maneuver us on the private sector service delivery by increasing (or being perceived to be doing so) competition to drive up standards and secondly involving the public with private sector service delivery to out-pace public service equivalents. I think we have a real job on our hands to get passed this. But that is the price we pay for having a narrow group of people at the top of our Party who believe that ignoring people and knowing better is the pathway ahead. The Tories have profitted by being more like us, we have lost out by being far too much like them. This is a challenge, a major one but not an impossible one and it will be very interesting to see how the PLP attempt to address this.
Barmy write-up. I would have thought Progress to be above this sort of thing. Bring back Bage. Re: “best line”, how does a mumbed “he may act as if he was born to rule, but he’s not very good at it” compare with “there is only one person round here I can remember knifing a Foreign Secretary and I think I am looking at him” ?
Aologies for spelling and grammer I write these comments in a hurry will try and use Word in futre and paste them in.
“Is this a dagger I see before me……. a dagger of the mind a false creation…..” OR,is it DANGER that you see,mate !
And yet we are 7th in the league of manufacturing countries with the industry reaching a growth of 4%.