David Cameron was looking pretty Billy Bunterish today at prime minister’s questions, with a curl which kept trying to escape on his forehead.
It was not his question time today. He kind of knew it wouldn’t be, and was trying very hard not to be petulant. Prime-ministerial petulance is not attractive. But he replaced his petulance by little laughs, which can sound sneering. Not a good look either.
Ed Miliband went straight for the kill. And today he dominated prime minister’s question time, pushing again and again on energy prices, making sure that the prime minister had to play on Labour’s ground.
Miliband had been fed the ammo the day before by John Major, who said that the energy companies should be subject to a windfall tax on excessive profits.
His first question hit the button: ‘The prime minister said anyone who wanted to intervene directly in energy markets was living in a Marxist universe. Can he tell the House how he feels now the red peril has claimed Sir John Major?’
The question forced Cameron to say that he did believe in intervening in the energy market, and he started to come up with a motley array of half-thought-through policies from having a ‘frank conversation’ to legislating to put customers on the lowest tariff.
High energy prices clearly have the coalition frontbench rattled, and Cameron was all over the shop. It made him look weak.
Ed pushed him: Labour was going to have a freeze on energy bills, John Major wanted a windfall tax. What was the prime minister going to do?
Rolling back green regulation and charges was the answer. And he blamed the regulation on Labour.
Ed retorted that 60 per cent of the green regulation had been introduced by his government. One of the prime minister’s Tory backbenchers Brian Binley from Northampton South later unhelpfully pressed the question, asking if the government was going to roll back Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne’s ‘unfortunate legacy’ of carbon-reduction taxes which he introduced when he was the coalition’s energy secretary.
Miliband looked comfortable, energetic and boyish, twitting Cameron about wearing too many woolly jumpers and getting overheated. What about the prime minister’s advice to switch energy suppliers? If someone on British Gas had switched to npower they would have faced a 10 per cent price rise, said Ed, driving home the advantage. You could save £250 if you switched claimed Cameron.
Ed definitely won. Nothing the prime minister tried really worked. It didn’t address the ‘heat or eat’ problem as Miliband finally defined it. Cameron’s jibe that Ed was a conman didn’t work: he was told off by the speaker John Bercow for using it too often because it was ‘below the level’.
Cameron’s final remark of PMQs was a cry of despair. It was in answer to Labour’s Kevin Barron, who asked about the role of Lynton Crosby in public health (Lynton Crosby’s firm Crosby Textor advises tobacco companies). ‘Lynton Crosby’s job’, said Cameron, ‘is the destruction of the Labour party and he is doing a pretty good one (sic).’ After today’s prime minister’s questions, that just sounded like whistling in the wind.
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Sally Gimson is a Labour councillor in the London borough of Camden and tweets @SallyGimson