Cameron gets clunked by Gordon’s great big fist

At last! A knockout for Gordon Brown today at Prime Minister’s Questions. After months of dancing and dodging Cameron finally had to plant his feet firmly on the ground and face the Prime Minister on the issue of policy alone, and not surprisingly, he came away looking uncomfortable and distinctly lightweight against the far more experienced and confident Brown.

In fairness to Cameron he had an almost impossible juggling act today in trying to appear statesmanlike and offer all-party support while simultaneously holding the government to account. However he has only himself to blame for the endless U-turns and knots he has tied himself up in over the past few weeks, doing Brown’s job for him in marking him out as a politically vacuous lightweight who can’t be trusted on anything.

Lately Cameron and George Osbourne have done so many U-turns over their economic position they’re in danger of smacking themselves in the face with their own arses.

For anyone watching, the biggest problem for Cameron was the obvious delight his every word was greeted with by Labour MPs, who couldn’t believe their eyes and ears to see and hear a Conservative leader condemning city bonuses and demanding the government hold these city bosses to account.

The problem for Cameron was that on a day the government was offering a £500 billion bail-out, city bonuses seemed quite irrelevant and merely allowed Brown to expound on the myriad of things the government are doing to help the economy, all of which came across as more important than the matter of city bonuses.

Constant ridicule was bad enough for Cameron, but Gordon saved the best till last, and delivered the clunking blow to Cameron we’ve been waiting so long for at the end of their debate.

All through the session Cameron had decided to stick with the city bonuses line, probably desperate to be seen on the side of angry families rather than any real desire to see them punished, and unusually for someone as deft on his feet as Cameron, setting himself up perfectly for Gordon’s clunking fist to knock him for six when Brown quoted Cameron on his appearance on the Andrew Marr:

What you won’t hear from me this week is sort of easy, cheap lines kind of just beating up on the market system, bashing the financiers.

The howls of derision and laughter from the Labour backbenchers must have been sweet music to Gordon’s ears after the troubles of the summer, and a dangerous reminder for Cameron at how exposed he has made himself by twisting, turning, manipulating and u-turning over the economy and the banking crisis, the one issue set to dominate the political scene from now until the next general election.

21/05/08 - PMQ’s - Brown edges it for me but he must try answer at least a couple of questions!

Well, I expected Brown to get a mauling today in an attempt by the Tories to really cement the momentum going into tomorrow’s by-election in Crewer & Nantwich. I hadn’t considered the issue of Burma and just expected Cameron to go straight into a 10p tax assault.

Prime Minister’s Questions - 07/05/08

I didn’t bother writing a blog entry for last week, the PMQ’s was quite boring (relative to any large ‘incidents’) but I figured I’d better this week as I expected Cameron to give Brown a right battering.

As it happens I didn’t think it was too bad today.

PMQ’s 23/04/08 - Opportunism Knocks

Prime Minister’s Question Time is probably one of the few times when it can be good to be a Leader of the Opposition. You can stand up, crack a few jokes, have everyone laugh sycophantically with you, insult the Prime Minister (and who gets to do that, to his face, every week?) and pretend to care about issues you have absolutely no history of taking an interest in.

Prime Minister’s Questions 23/4/08 - “Pre-Match Analysis”

My first post for the weekly sessions of Prime Ministers Questions, which Bruce Forsyth recently described as ‘pure vaudeville’. Not sure Gordon Brown would go for that but there you go.

23rd April 2008

 Since the last PMQ’s, pre-Easter recess, Labour and Gordon Brown in particular have got a right old kicking in the press. A few of the more sage journalists have pointed out that this often happens during recess as political hacks run out of things to say. Certainly the hysterical poll that said Gordon Brown is actually more unpopular than when Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler was a bit hard to take seriously.