Bully boy Cameron

It is difficult to be leader of the opposition at prime minister’s questions. You ask about the right things and you just get batted away with a string of meaningless facts and figures, which you know are only half-truths.

Ed Miliband’s technique is to ask questions quietly and reasonably and to watch Cameron go off on one. And the prime minister obliges. The bully boys of Twitter declare that the prime minister has won, but these look very much like pyrrhic victories.

Cameron looks so unbelievably unpleasant on these occasions that you watch in horror and wonder if just by being there you are complicit. Even Nick Clegg who was sitting beside Cameron had to look away at one point. Miliband and the frontbench team retained dignity throughout, even Ed Balls who was gratuitously set upon several times.

Cameron likes to answer a question – usually by not answering it – and then move on. The Miliband manoeuvre is not to let him.

This time Miliband was attacking him on bankers’ bonuses and asking Cameron if he would give a reassurance to the house that he would stop bankers at RBS being paid bonuses more than their salaries. Cameron answered all sorts of other things, but not Miliband’s specific question.

‘Surely he can say to people earning a million pounds that a bonus of a million pounds is enough’ asked Miliband.

No, Cameron couldn’t say that to people earning more than a million pounds.

And then he got fed up of not answering the question and turned to his now routine attack on Miliband, which is to compare him to Reverend Flowers. It wasn’t  funny the first time, and isn’t funny now.

When we got onto housing Miliband was again in the right – asking what Cameron’s reaction to Labour’s ‘use it or lose it’ proposal on developers who hoard land in the hope that it goes up in value.

Miliband reminded the prime minister that Labour’s proposal was backed by London mayor Boris Johnson.

His question started like this: ‘There are sites all over the country with capacity for quarter of a million – eurgh 250,000 – houses where nothing is happening …’ Cameron sneered and started mocking him for his poor grasp of maths, quite why was hard to tell except that Cameron like the idea of scoring another debating point.

What was more shocking was Cameron’s recipe for solving the housing crisis: ‘Why not make those Labour councils get on with selling council houses?’

You do feel that Miliband is setting Cameron up and it is Labour policy, which is making the weather. Cameron even outlined Labour messages, from the cost of living crisis to fixed-odds betting terminals, saying they were all useless campaigns. The fact he was able to enumerate them – and has had to respond to them in the last six months – was telling.

Cameron must have felt uncertain about this PMQs. Tory MPs were all disciplined and geared up this week to ask about growth projects in their constituencies. Anything, from a jobs fair to a major infrastructure project, was clearly considered acceptable by the whips.

Labour MPs had rather more international concerns on their mind. Two MPs from the west Midlands Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) and Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South-east) asked about the government inquiry into British involvement in the 1984 massacre in Amritsar. There have been reports from papers released under the 30-year rule that Britain was involved in supporting the Indian police’s plans to remove violently Sikh separatists from the Golden Temple. Watson asked whether British support had anything to do with the Westland deal, which led to some gasps. Cameron said the report had discovered nothing of the sort so far.

Meanwhile, Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) was concerned with six British former paratroopers – one of whom is his constituent – who have been locked up in Chennai after being arrested by Indian police.

What got the most ears pricked up was Siobhain McDonagh’s (Mitcham and Morden) revelation that policemen will now have to pay £1,000 to even get an application form. She is calling it the ‘bobby tax’ and the prime minister was nonplussed by her question, which ended like this: ‘Charging for army commissions was abolished in 1871 – why is it being introduced for the police in the 21st century?’

Prime minister’s questions have now become a platform for Cameron to show just how heartless, bullying and out of touch he is, and the worst thing is that he doesn’t realise it.