We played a game of ‘Who said what’ today in parliament. It is more like a pantomime than a pub quiz because the answer is always obvious. And members of parliament can and do shout the equivalent of ‘He is over there!’
The subject under discussion, televised leaders debates, might appear trivial to outsiders but they can have a significant effect on a tight general election. And we are in full election mode. Even a marginal advantage might be a decider. And how could we all forget Cleggmania last time around?
Anyway, Ed Miliband was goading David Cameron about why he would not take part in the televised debates.
‘Speaking about the TV debates a party leader says: “It would have been feeble to find some excuse to back out so I thought we have got to stick at this, we have got to do it”. Who said that?’
There was loud heckling in the chamber because they all knew the answer: David Cameron on Sky News in May 2010.
Cameron turned the question back on Miliband. He said he was all for having a debate with two ‘minor parties’, the United Kingdom Independence party and the Liberal Democrats, but they should have the third one too. Why, he asked, was Miliband so frightened of debating with the Greens?
In this topsy-turvy pantomime world where Cameron is increasingly becoming the comical dame, he has said he will only have a televised debate if the Greens are on the platform. Ofcom has said the Greens are too small a party to be represented, but Ukip can be. Unfair, says Cameron. Despite all the prime minister’s bravado he is rather afraid of what Nigel Farage might say and thinks the Greens would give Labour more of a run for its money and cancel out the effect of Ukip on him. Or something like that. Pantomime stuff.
Miliband in full Prince Charming mode said it was nothing to do with the Greens and he was perfectly willing to debate with anyone.
‘Last Thursday his abiding passion was the give the Green party a platform. It is a pathetic excuse. It is up to the broadcasters to decide who is in the debate,’ said Miliband. ‘Is he really telling the people of Britain that he is denying the right for a debate if he does not get to see [the Greens] on the platform?’
‘These debates,’ said Miliband, ‘Do not belong to me they do not belong to him, they belong to the British people.’ Invoking the Tory fairy godmother, Margaret Thatcher, Miliband declared Cameron ‘frit’.
Cameron then accused Miliband of not talking about unemployment, the economy or his energy policy ‘which was a joke.’ A trick of Cameron’s which he almost always pulls off is using the last answer in PMQs to make political attack on Labour so Miliband cannot argue back. The NHS was still on the agenda for most Labour MPs and they went for it.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) asked why the prime minister made all sorts of promises on the NHS and then broken them.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) pointed out that there was a ‘meltdown’ in accident and emergency services and the prime minister was accusing the Labour party of whipping up a crisis – how could that be?
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) highlighted the pressure the ambulance service was under and said in the east of England 57 people died waiting for an ambulance ‘Is the prime minister not ashamed that that this is what happened when his government runs the NHS?’ Cameron told him he was wrong, there was an enquiry and no one had died because of the ambulance service. The problem had also been sorted out.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) said: ‘According to the Royal College of Nurses the number of nurses in London fell by 4,000. The prime minister says they are rising. Who is right?’ Cameron spouted off a lot of incomprehensible figures about different boroughs including Redbridge and Waltham Forest.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) was told by Cameron that he was spreading misinformation about hospital closures and he should start printing the truth on his leaflets. Slaughter had innocently asked about a 94-year-old constituent of his who had spent six hours in a corridor in accident and emergency waiting to get admitted to hospital and then was transferred to another hospital the next day. ‘Will axing the accident and emergency department at Charing Cross hospital make such appalling incidents more or less likely?’
The answer was obvious. That is probably why Cameron did not like it.
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Sally Gimson is a journalist and Labour councillor in the London borough of Camden. She writes the PMQs on Progress column and tweets @SallyGimson