After the lacklustre Queen’s speech the deputy prime minister said in a letter to his party activists this week that: ‘Liberal Democrats are punching above their weight’.
At last, I said at Business Questions on Thursday, we have an acknowledgement from them – that they are in the political lightweight division. After all, this is a party that was beaten at the polls last week by a man dressed as a penguin.
The deputy prime mMinister added in desperation that the Queen’s speech ‘has a firm Liberal Democrat stamp on it’. And he was right. It had: nothing to say on the economy, nothing to say on getting people back to work, nothing to help hard-pressed families.
All they want to do is sit around and debate House of Lords reform.
The leader of the House announced six days of debate on the government’s packed legislative programme. I asked if he would find time for a debate on how the Liberal Democrats are punching above their weight and also if he could find time for Oliver Letwin to participate in it. After all, he said last year that ‘the government doesn’t know what it is doing after 2011 … we’ve run out of ideas’.
I asked the leader of the House if he could coax Oliver out of whatever cupboard they’ve put him in and get him to the dispatch box so we can congratulate him on being correct?
Before the Queen’s speech the Conservative chair of the public administration committee said the government ‘lacked a compelling vision’.
I said the problem isn’t they lack a compelling vision, the problem is they lack any vision at all.
Meanwhile, while his economic plan is failing we had the part-time chancellor focused on his other job of managing the Conservative’s election strategy.
And Thursday’s local election result showed just how very well that’s going. In the chamber, I asked the leader of the House join me in congratulating the new Chipping Norton set – of Labour councillors – elected in the prime minister’s constituency last Thursday. They join more than 800 other new Labour councillors – elected up and down the country.
And after the Tory-Lib Dem ballot box bashing, the prime minister said he wants to listen.
He should start by meeting his new Labour councillors who can tell this out-of-touch prime minister what the electorate are really saying.
—————————————————————————————
Angela Eagle is MP for Wallsey, shadow leader of the Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress