Ed Miliband showed the prime minister up as someone more interested in abuse than governing today.
The Labour strategy was to go on the attack, defending the proposed mansion tax and condemning the bedroom tax.
It was as if, for the first time in a while, Miliband smelled blood on the Tory benches. Not surprising considering the United Kingdom Independence party are likely to defeat the Conservatives in the Rochester and Strood by-election tomorrow.
‘Two of the people behind him have jumped ship and the others are waiting for the result [tomorrow] to see if they will follow’, jeered Miliband at one stage.
But actually the statesman-like performance was Miliband’s. David Cameron was reduced to his Punch-and-Judy pre-prepared lines. Cameron accused Miliband of ‘taking a pasting from a pop star’. He made a joke at Miliband’s expense that more people in Scotland believe in the Loch Ness monster than the Labour leader – except that unfortunately for the Labour party, Ed Miliband is real. He said Miliband was hopeless, useless, out of his depth and an absolute disaster. He repeated the repeated again that Myleene Klass had ‘wiped the floor with him’.
It was desperate stuff. There was too much of it. He was rather like that man at dinner parties who has had slightly too much to drink reveals his nasty bullying side.
Miliband started stealthily: ‘Can the PM tell us why he is so in favour of the bedroom tax and so against the mansion tax’.
And then he went on. Why, asked Miliband, were victims of domestic violence being made to pay the bedroom tax on their panic rooms? There was no answer to that except that the government had allowed councils to make discretionary housing payments.
Miliband was on to that: ‘Protecting victims of domestic violence should not be a matter of discretion it should be a matter of principle.’
Cameron had no answer to this except for personal abuse. Miliband went on to ask why someone with a £140m penthouse in Hyde Park should pay the same property tax as people with much smaller houses.
Cameron had few answers. His policies sounded lame and the insults to Miliband made it worse.
‘If you have got big money you have got a friend in this prime minister’, said Miliband after a further attack on NHS waiting targets. ‘If you haven’t, he couldn’t care less.’
There were plenty of Labour MPs to back Miliband. David Winnick (Walsall North) said that the bedroom tax would be remembered like the poll tax.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) brought up the pressure at his local Northwick Park hospital because of the closure of local accident and emergency departments. And Clive Efford (Eltham) gave an impassioned plea for his private members’ bill, which would repeal the Health and Social care act.
It was good to see Miliband on offensive on controversial policies like the mansion tax. It made him look more statesmanlike precisely because the newspapers and London chattering classes haven’t liked it.
Cameron sounded more and more rabid like the Daily Mail sometimes. It felt more desperate than reasonable.
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Sally Gimson is a journalist and Labour councillor in the London borough of Camden. She tweets @SallyGimson
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I don’t listen to PMQs but just the sort of summary included in the BBC news. You would never know from the BBC reporting what reallly happened during that 1/2 hour.
Miliband may well have asked some sensible questions but it would be a good idea to get them out in at least some more thoughtful media. Labour also needs to report the whole of C’s idiotic answers. In some ways it would be better if Ed just asked his questions & when not getting a sensible answer (all of the time). Just try repeating it, then Cam will look even more stupid. PMQs should be cancelled anyway. They are stupid & not at all representative of parliament generally.
Someone should tell Cameron that running this country is ” no-laughing-matter”. His school boy attempts at satirical quips are not worthy of a column over at Private Eye toilet-Mag Pedants’ corner – or as an understudy to Quentin (Toi)Letts at the dm. Very funny haha, not Dave, Not! How very informative for our UK kids and those of Europe and the World looking at this sneeringly-creepy guy we call our PM, snivelling down his Snooty nose almost bickering at all the very sound, erudite questions from Ed Miliband today.Thanks to Ed’s composure, calm and steady manner, Ed didn’t return the PMs smarmy, off-hand manner in kind. Ed Miliband stayed statesmanlike, yet firm. Cameron’s current ‘nervous laugh’ shows he is under difficult strain and can he be trusted to operate under pressure? Labour must get rid of this man sooner than next May. Can he be trusted with decisions which affect the whole of the UKs future and current threats from overseas ? I think, not for the 1st time, that our leaders in top positions who hold the power in office [war buttons] should see a shrink at least twice a year – in Cameron’s case once a week, daily Valium medication and a suicide watch.
This is scary stuff . I contend our current PM is cracking. Shame.
Hurry up and get rid of this man, Ed , he is in dire need of a holiday in Cotswolds. Or Cheddleton.
The most astonishing thing to hear today was UKIP on ‘deportations’ from the UK- possibly one of the most offensive, unEuropean, fascist / Nazi sounding things we have ever heard from a party which pretends to be ,mainstream. Its time all the main parties, pro-European businesses, trade unions, education/intelligentsia, ethnic minorities ( including Jewish groups) exposed UKIP for what it is – a form of creeping racism. The UK is fast moving right and people are sat on their hands. The BBC actually had on their headlines a politician on this deportation issues…yes you guest Farange not any of the other leaders, or any one from another party. UK creeping rightwards with the BBC giving publicity at peaktime to only the UKIP leader.