I was in the Commons for PMQs today and saw the prime minister slip into chamber almost unnoticed to a surly Conservative side. It almost seems as if they don’t like him!
Ed got in early, highlighting coalition differences over proposals to allow employers the right to sack people they don’t much like the look of. David Cameron was as usual aggressive and manoeuvred the questioning into an issue of trade union funding. Ed had a ready riposte: that since the government cut the top rate of tax donations had poured into Tory coffers. He then told the prime minister that he was out of touch with ordinary families and stood with the wrong people. With a final thrust he announced that the nasty party was back.
Cameron then did something strange – he confirmed the criticism accidentally by listing his government’s achievements, like corporation tax cuts, which would be low on a list of priorities struggling to cope with rising prices and low employment opportunities.
As the rest of the session meandered on, the increasing gap between Tory MPs and reality widened as MP after MP lined up to say how swimmingly the economy is going. Christopher Pincher told MPs the economy was headed ‘in the right direction’ – that direction being recession.
The final flourish was when the prime minister called Labour MPs ‘muttering idiots’. It may make his members laugh but in the long run it merely confirms the impression of the prime minister as an out of touch public school bully, and that sums up this PMQs.
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Arjun Mittra is a councillor in the London borough of Barnet