I began Business of the House Questions this morning by expressing solidarity and condolences with our sister parliament in Ottawa following the terrorist attack yesterday. This was an attack on democracy and it will not succeed.
During Business Questions last week William Hague accused me of suffering from amnesia on the deficit. I bet he wishes he had amnesia this week, because the deficit has gone up! The chancellor promised in 2010 that he would eliminate it by the end of 2015 but because of his economic failure he had to push that back to 2018. Now figures this week show that he’s off track to do even that.
There is a real deficit between this government’s rhetoric and the reality. You wouldn’t think from all George Osborne’s complacent boasts that borrowing went up by 10 per cent in the first half of the year and despite all the talk of Tory ‘fiscal responsibility’ the prime minister has just announced £7bn worth of pie-in-the-sky unfunded pre-election bribes. With all these missed targets it is less of a long-term economic plan and more of a really, really, really long-term economic scam!
As Hallowe’en approaches it has become clear that the Tories are dusting off their ghosts of governments past. This week Philip Davies launched an astonishing attack on a campaign by the girl guides for more sex and relationship education in schools, claiming it would increase teenage pregnancies. David Cameron turned up for the first time in 14 years at a meeting of the ultra-Thatcherite ‘No Turning Back’ group to plead with his ever loyal backbenchers and Jacob Rees-Mogg was openly conniving with the Ukip treasurer over lunch. It is no surprise that Ken Clarke took to the airwaves challenging more Tory Eurosceptics to defect to Ukip.
I finished by talking about the man with the hardest job in politics, the Conservative chief whip Michael Gove. He has already lost two high-profile votes, lost two ministers to resignation, and lost two MPs to Ukip. My sources tell me that he is now hiding in Rochester and Strood, and apparently when he was asked about the Ukip threat he said: ‘Does this face look bovvered?’ The way this government are pandering to Ukip it’s less Catherine Tate and more Little Britain.
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Angela Eagle is member of parliament for Wallasey, shadow leader of the House of Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress. She tweets @AngelaEagle
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It doesn’t help anyone when politicians take absurdly partisan myopic positions that everyone can see straight through. It’s just not credible to talk about “economic failure” when all the newspaper and TV headlines are pointing out UK has the best growth in the developed world. In fact it’s risible. And so there is no serious debate and the world just becomes a little more jaded with politicians and a bit more cynical about politics in general. How pray tell does this advance the cause in any way?