So, if you were listening to PMQs, who did you think came off best? I reckon Cameron did well again and won the bout, but I don't always trust my own judgement on these ritualistic knockabouts. Three times Brown tried to turn it into Leader of the Opposition's Questions by asking Cameron a question instead of responding to the question put by Cameron. At one point the Speaker pointed out that Cameron didn't have to answer any question, but the problem is that if the PM asks a question and Cameron doesn't answer it, he looks as if he is avoiding it.
I thought Brown's response to Cable was rather good - "he's better at the jokes than he is at the economics".
Listen to PMQs HERE, courtesy of Tory Radio.
79 comments:
I was going for a no-score draw. Gorbals really must hide his bias less obvious "the PM is in order" during a Brown speechette avoiding the question. However, the outright lie over the UK being the second highest defence spender was laughable.
Cameron but only by a hair.
And i would rather trust the judgement of the ex chief economist at Shell than the iron Chancer.
Broon the unelectecd scottish communist Prime Minister of England thinks its he who should be asking questions at PMQs.
Brown's comment about Cable is strange, would even the most ardent Brownite seriously claim that the dour Scotsman has a better grasp of economics that Vince Cable?
Why does Beanie Brown always drift back to more than a decade when he is cornered? Surely we are way past what happened in the last Conservative administration.It's Labour's failings which concern and affect us now.
You missed the best question.
"With three police investigations under way, two of his Cabinet ministers in breach of rules and his General Secretary faces charges of law-breaking, is this what the Prime Minister meant when he said he was a "conviction politician"?!"
if Cable (ex Chief Economist at Shell) is better at jokes than economics he must be the funnier than Rowan Atkinson!
When GB tries to get back at the Tories by referring to their policies back in the 1980s you know he's beginning to struggle. Going back one decade is bad enough, going back two shows desperation.
Best joke was the "conviction politician" one.
Unfortunately, I think Brown edged it, though going back to the '80's is pushing credibility. He must not be allowed to continue with the line that spending more money is of itself enough and a good thing. There was no challenge on this, which given the disastrous education survey findings, is a serious omission.
On defence, the Tories are tied because of supporting the war on Iraq, so a claim that spending on defence has gone up cannot be challenged as seriously as it should be.
I agree with sniper - Cameron did not win today's encounter, and failed to land a knock-out blow.
Best moment for me was when a Tory asked the PM '..Is this what the PM meant when he said he was a conviction politician ?'..
Give that man a coconut !
Harriet Harman must be breathing a huuuuge sigh of relief, as I think this means she is out of the woods..
No score draw really sums it up.
Cameron was a bit like a Chelsea striker against the West Ham defence.
So many open goals that he took his eye off the ball and failed to score.
He should move on from 'Donorgate' - the damage to Brown is done - and concentrate on failures like education and defence.
Incidentally why does he continue to allow Brown to set the sombre tone for Questions by referring to the latest death in Iraq/Afghanistan. Why not call Brown a hypocrite and say if he meant it, he would increase defence spending.
cameron missed an open goal
he was scattered in his approach
AB
yep - conviction politician - chuckle :-)
YOu're focussing on what, in the enormity of what has happened to the tiniest shred of honour in British politics, is a sideshow. It doesn't matter who said the cleverest thing any more, because there is no lightness in British politics any more.
The system is breaking down around your ears and you are judging who won a little fairly predictable sideshow. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that these thugs have to be brought to account and thrown out of public office in Britain, preferably into a small room with bars on the windows.
Camoron sounded over-rehearsed and his canoe joke sank withouttrace. Was it his script-writer's day off?
Brown humourless as ever, and needs to sort his voice out. The put-down of Cable missed.
All in all a nil-nil. Perhaps UEFA should investigate?
Cameron came off best as always. He's fluent and can think on his feet which Brown can't. Gordon flustered and blustered as usual and most of his answers sounded like downright lies. In fact the whole of the Labour benches were utterly despicable. Their shouting and jeering while questions were being asked about the troops was particularly apalling. They seemed hellbent on preventing the opposition being heard which demonstrates their ongoing contempt for democracy. And I kept looking at Harriet Harman and wondering why Gordon thought it was a good idea to have a criminal sitting next to him.
On the Daily Politics Nick Robinson thought Gordon gave a masterful performance and that Cameron failed to make his mark. Don't Nick Robinson or the BBC care about their reputations at all.
The ginger minger blears is on bbc2now. that scottish git is handing her pieces of paper like she is a small child having a bad homework returned as it was crap. her face is a fixed smile with gritted- fuck off you cunt- you are really embarrassing me expression.
lovely, lovely, lovely.
nearly worth the licence fee.
Greg Hand stole the show. DC was unfortunate with the appointments question but Broon will struggle as soon as a real Speaker replaces Gorbals Mick and stops allowing him to ignore valid questions.
It's not Opposition Leader's Question Time.
DC shaded it despite Gorbals best efforts.
Team Brown will be pleased to have salvaged a point from that encounter..
And on Five Live John Pienar thinks that because Gordon says he's appointed someone to the post of Commissioner for Standards in Public Life (or whatever its called) today it doesn't matter at all that there hasn't been one for the past seven months and that it was a mistake to mention it. So it seems that the edict must have gone out throughout the BBC that everyone has to say Gordon is Great - in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
The Tories must be the last people left in the country who care about donors. Even the Daily Mail has given up on it. It's not exactly up there with cash for questions, is it?
Verity, you forgot to mention Harman being fat. I can't think why - after all, it's your best and only argument against her.
Trying to spin a few points in the polls out of the troops won't wash either. Here again you show how utterly out of touch you are. Show me an opinion poll that says anyone rates the army anywhere among their top 10 priorities. There isn't one. Mandelson was right, they're chinless wonders and nobody cares. Labour once again picks up the popular mood.
Cameron flounders and Brown moves on, to a surefire election victory in 2010. It's already in the bag. It's good to be fat!
Peter Hitchens has noticed that the BBC as been reportng Cameron`s performances in glowing terms when they are not as good a Hagues ,hich were ritually ignored. With PMQ`s the gaseous impression is far more importan than the event.
Oh Iain I `ll get back to you next week with a witty retort , is not impressive , even I can manage that.
I think Brown`s claim he can lop 5% of the admin costs netting £30 billion is better material . How does he know and if he can what the F...has he been doing for ten years
Perhaps watching on 'The Politics Show' is a mistake. I find Nick Robinson's post match analyses less and less convincing and torrents of wittering in the studio from Hazel Blears today took the edge off everything.
Looking back to what was said in the House, as far as TV allows one to fully appreciate all the nuances of performance, I'd have thought Cameron did quite well and, on the basis of last week's restrained performance as well as this, I'd have thought that he and his team realised the dangers of excessive brutality long before Janet Daley penned her Torygraph article accusing him of bullying. (Which is a change from a few months ago when the main criticism from all sides seemed to be that nice guys finish last and that as Tories we are all doomed.)
Brown clearly doesn't have huge support behind him judging by the stillness of the bodies in shot at the same time as him. Killing him off fast might be good fun and quite cathartic, after the horrors of the years when Tories could do nothing right, but leaving the body to rot on the gibbet might work better. My guess is that Cameron did what he intended to do.
Cable looked a bit woe-begone but then he always does. I had thought a few good questions over past weeks and an excellent (even if borrowed) joke last week were probably as good as it is going to get for him and wasn't convinced otherwise today. I've noted over the last few weeks that his utterances on the subject of Northern Rock have come in for some very sharp technical criticism from John Redwood in his blog.
The real test of questions and answers isn't what studio critics and politics fans like those of us who post here think (or at least say and write), but how they go down in with a wider audience. When 'Daily Politics' runs its response panel the experts rarely seemd totally aligned with responses from the public. Strange that it hasn't been used much lately!
Interesting stuff. But no end of disastrous things can be done by the present governement before they need to answer at the polls, and probably will be.
The "anonymous" at 1229 wrote:
"Why does Beanie Brown always drift back to more than a decade when he is cornered? Surely we are way past what happened in the last Conservative administration.It's Labour's failings which concern and affect us now."
This is correct. We can and must learn from history where appropriate, but (as I am known for saying) we shouldn't live in the past. The world has moved on, and changed quite dramatically.
Meanwhile, I too have been looking for a decent excuse to use the "conviction" gag! I was going to see if I could at our next meeting of the Full Council, but have been beaten to it.
Still, at least my "Clucking Fist" jibe (with A4-size printout of the graphic to show to the Chamber) went down well at the last such meeting -- with all except the Labour members, that is!
Cameron had a couple of good moments although Brown managed to push back a lot of the attacks. The guy who asked about "conviction politics" definitely had the best line of the day - but he should have lent it to Dave really.
It is about time that someone sat down and did the sums on the cost of Black Wednesday against the amount of unsecured lending to Northern Rock (the secured fraction I don't have a problem with; it is the rest that makes me feel nervous). Add in the money lost in selling gold at the bottom of the market and I reckon that we must be well above the 3.1bn that Black Wednesday totted up.
If we can go on the attack on this and have a set line that neutralises one of Browns standard fallback positions then it will make Cameron's life a lot easier at the dispatch box.
I cannot believe that Harman, Alexander and Hain are still in post. Cameron is facing a government full of shameless liars who even when they are caught don't care enough to show any honour. How can Cameron score points against Brown on lesser matters when they don't care about having a criminal as the deputy leader and party chairman and another fraudster leading Scottish Labour.
Brown's weekly attempts to blame the opposition for his own decisions are getting really, really tired now. I particularly liked his assertion that the 2001 Conservative manifesto's promise to combine the Scottish/defence jobs was somehow to blame for his current mess - the defence landscape and the Scottish landscape were both roundly different in 2001, and this can't have escaped anybody listening.
Cameron just won but neither side actually scored a goal. Nulab only have to stop scoring own goals for Boy Dave to go back to uselessness.
I thort Gordon winned
Today's PMQs was an absolute bore. Neither Brown nor Cameron were impressive and all those toady questions from "my honourable friends" begin to look more creepy and disfunctional by the week. Who the hell are they for? I can't believe they impress even the honourable members' constituency faithful. These are the sort of MPs who need a good duffing up in the schoolyard. What a sad state British politics is in. The tories are performing pretty badly given the easy targets they've currently got.
The Guardian says that Cameron was in good form.
They especially liked the joke about Gordon Brown and the lost man in a canoe.
:)
sniper said...
"However, the outright lie over the UK being the second highest defence spender was laughable."
So which countries apart from the USA spend more on defence?
"Now here is an image to conjure with - Mr Bean (played by Gordon Brown) in a canoe, suffering from amnesia and up the creek without a paddle."
BBC
At least Cable can do one or the other - Bean's capable of neither!
Cameron won, though D.C. should get into the habit of replying to Bean's questions by telling him that if he wants to ask the questions and Cameron to answer them, all he has to do is call that election.
Best lines IMO were Cameron's 'man in a canoe' joke, and the comment about being a 'conviction politician'.
Cameron wasn't as good as he's been in recent weeks, but Brown was still poor. Agree completely with all those plumping for a no score draw.
Even Stevens I say. Which is in all regards a win for Brown really. This is not his metier, just now anyway. So staying even is a win.
Cameron was as off form as Brown was by his standards on form. And as you say the batting questions back with questions is a good route to show up DC's lack of answers - one way or another.
verity 1:01 PM
Unless you are recommending a military coup, then Parliament, and public perception of performance there, and ultimately the way people vote are very far from being sideshows.
All this hand-wringing about honour and integrity and the system breaking down is fair comment, but not the most important point. Criminals from both sides (2 of ours already,after all) ought to be put behind bars because they are criminals, not because it would help 'our side' get to power.
Like it or not Labour are in power because they won enough votes to command a majority in the House. By 2005, those sufficiently concerned to vote at all were not exactly ignorant of who and what they were voting for; apart from those tribally committed, the perception was 'lesser of two evils'. This will only change if the Tory message is seen to make more sense than the Labour one. That requires persuasion and performance as well as being well founded. PMQs matter a great deal.
I thought Cameron was poor today, he never really recovered from his first question when Brown stated that the person was being appointed today. Very poor research by the Tory team. Brown's stance of asking the question to the tories several time was interesting. It could be quite a clever move by Labour, I certainly think that Cameron needs to emphasise the Union side of things and highlight the Brown hypocrisy on the issue.
The thing is expectations of Brown are now so low that all he has to do is stay on his feet and manage a few sentences without stuttering and he starts to get a lenient press. Actually I thought he was pretty crap - just not quite so disastrous as the previous few weeks. Cameron was better by a mile - but had no killer line to get any special mentions. But to claim Brown 'won' PMQs - as Fraser Nelson is doing on CoffeeHouse - is pretty absurd. He certainly didn't come up with anything worthy of being played on the news that could genuinely be called a 'win'.
brown won. the fightback starts here!
The problem about Brown put-down of Cable is that it is a week too late. His people have had a week to come up with a line that he should have come back with straight away if he was any good at PMQs.
@sniper said...
// And i would rather trust the judgement of the ex chief economist at Shell than the iron Chancer //
Iron Chancer? Are you referring to the Prime Mincer?
Cameron came off best in my opinion and the 'canoe' gag was priceless. However, Brown is getting better and was looking less awkward for once. He managed to silence Cable this time round, but it's not him that he has to worry about.
Thought the "man in the canoe" line worked. Especially as the "man in the canoe" has now been arrested....
I think Cameron won but not surprisingly not so convincingly as for last couple of weeks.
What about Darling's latest blunder
“Darling Spoke at Deutsche Bank Hosted Labour Fund-Raiser”
http://www.order-order.com/2007/12/exclusive-darling-at-deutsche-bank.html
Whenever I see Cameron at PMQs he reminds me of Flashman the school bully in Tom Brown's Schooldays.
Only just caught it on a iPlayer rerun, but can't really quibble with any other comments.
All a bit insipid really, including the backbenchers; maybe a bit of a feeling of anticlimax with only extensions to known scandals to discuss. I thought Cable was the loser - poor after a good few weeks.
Cameron v Brown - You could maybe see it as a narrow win to DC in absolute terms, but it's hard to escape the feeling that in terms of 'added value' you could score it the other way, given Brown's position in the sticky stuff and the material available to Cameron. DC should certainly have been able to turn the party funding questions back on Brown more effectively.
Have to agree with Desperate Dan on Nick Robinson. Normally I don't have my normal BBC axe to grind with NR, but his 'live' reaction to events in the Commons is often out of tune with the observations of most, even his BBC fellows (especially last week), but is more considered in later appearances/writing.
Chipmunk was awful on the programme though, wish she'd been in chamber.
Who cares? Petrol prices are going through the roof, and people are beginning to notice the price increases in the supermarkets. That and the fact that house prices are going down is the real bad news for this government.
Please will someone clarify for me exactly what the Tories position was on part time ministers. Did the Tories really suggest a part time Defence Minister or only a part time Scottish minister?
All Brown manages to do these days is lie, bluster, and sham his way through PMQs. To help him he's now started asking Cameron long-winded questions and is getting away with it because Mick Martin let's him.
Brown's performance is pathetic and shameful and shows this country and it's political institutions in a bad light and displays a weak and incompetent Prime Minister desperately resorting to bluff and bluster on nearly every issue that assails him.
However, as we all know "it's the economy stupid" and there appears to be a tsunami about to drown UK plc and destroy the value of sterling:
Brown's Future as Prime Minister Hangs on Pound
By Matthew Lynn
Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- It may become the most calamitous premiership for at least 100 years. Less than six months after taking over from Tony Blair as U.K. prime minister, Gordon Brown has already stumbled through a series of disasters. He is, to use a popular word in the financial markets, a subprime minister and he leads a subprime economy.
Brown has taken a beating. As he knows from his 10 years as chancellor, so long as you can deliver a prosperous economy and keep public spending flowing, you can survive just about anything. If you can't, you start to look like sliced sausage.....
There is little doubt that the outlook is grim......
.........Many economists see sterling as suspended in mid-air. The U.K. has massive trade and budget deficits. For the past year, the markets have been pummeling the dollar. That will stop soon. Already, the U.S. trade gap is narrowing, and soon a German- style export-led recovery will be under way in the U.S. The currency markets will need a new target -- after all, traders have to sell something to stay in business. Sterling looks like a sitting duck.
It might well be the fragility of Brown's government that provides the trigger for an attack on sterling. Brown's problems are only just starting. It will be the foreign-exchange markets that finish him off.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aoyU9AlR.YKI&refer=home
Was Cable the Chief Economist at Shell when they were hauled up over misinformation concerning their resources or something a few years ago?
iain, ditch the PMQ's, what about Andrew Gilligan's expose in the Eve Standard of financial shenanigans in Livingstone's Cabinet of All the (non)Talents?
Lee Jasper refusing to answer questions on dubious grants.
Never rains but it pours, does it Mr Brown?
Brown is so utterly desperate about military funding. Why can't he be honest and transparent that by any meaningful standard (PPP) we are 5th in the world which IMO is a perfectly respectable number considering USA, China, India & Russia or so much bigger than us.
The Suns verdict on PMQs - "Cam slams PM on defence record" and says DC was at his "barnstorming best". I don't agree with that, but it's interesting how DC is getting good reviews (from the Times, Guardian and even the BBC) even tho' he wasn't as sharp as previous weeks. Does this mark a change in the political weather?
No.
What an insult that a reward of just £20,000 is being offered for the return of the two missing HMRC discs.That equates to £0.0008 per person's details or per new identity. These discs are worth many more times that if they are in the wrong hands.
Just read that bottler Brown has bottled going to sign the EU treaty, and will send one of his minions (David Millipede) to sign it instead. Apparently, he has a conflicting diary, and can't make it...i.e. he doesn't want to be photographed at the summit, going against the will of the British people, as it would cause his 'popularity' (or lack of it) to nosedive yet further...
McAvity strikes again!
Anon 2:12
http://web.mit.edu/CIS/images/fpi/military_spending/fig4.gif
Not wikipedia
Source
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), SIPRI Yearbook 2005: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Appendix 8A
See also http://www.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/mex_wnr_table.html
As compiled by the "Not the Most Pro-War Guys on the Planet"
I think it is time for the Tories to be far less timid. they need to take the gloves off and fight labour on every issue.The Tories do not need to be the nasty party but the do need to be an attacking party.
Clear win for Cameron. Straight sets.
Henry Rogers - I don't know about a military coup, although I might not be entirely opposed, but I think it would be helpful if HM decided she didn't want criminals running her government and dissolved Parliament.
We could then either have an election pretty sharpish, or an interim military government, which would be by far the most thrilling.
BTW, Fraser Nelson over on The Speccie's Coffee House blog thinks Gordon Grunt won PMQs hands down this week.
cameron ought to have asked 'where's Duggie'?
I was surprised to see that one of the Electoral Commission's Parliamentry Advisors is a Lord Elder. A peer with the same name had also donated funds to Wendy Alexander. No wonder the little beesom is so confident of clearing her name.
Defence spending 2005/06
United States $623 billion
China $65.0 billion
Russia $50.0 billion
France $45.0 billion
United Kingdom $42.8 billion
Gordon talking out of his moral compost again
I thought Brown's response to Cable was rather good - "he's better at the jokes than he is at the economics".
Yes, I wonder who (after a number of days)thought that one up.....you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn't Brown. He doesn't do jokes cos he is one.
@Miss Wagstaff said...
// Cameron came off best in my opinion and the 'canoe' gag was priceless. However, Brown is getting better and was looking less awkward for once. He managed to silence Cable this time round, but it's not him that he has to worry about. //
I reckon they've changed his medication
About even. Brown is getting better but Cameron is getting it spot on. After all Cameron doesn't want Brown to be replaced by Miliband. Steady as she goes.
By the way, I hear the police will shortly seek the right to strike (at ECHR if necessary) over some typical NuLab double dealing over pay. Now this really has legs! 170,000 X 2 to be precise. All this and the terrorist threat being so severe! A slow burn methinks.
Mr Speaker won this very sorry session. At least he managed to interject without roars and jeers from the two benches.
I was mildly amused by his ticking off a Labour MP, telling the 'Rt Hon Gentleman to behave himself.'
Doug, Alexander the Pasty School-boy looked almost sheepish throughout - stopping to whisper with his classmate.
Cable's snipe at the civil service did much to amuse. Perhaps a fair point too - they are a little too proche and a little too in the government's pockets.
i'm not sure that vince cable had actually made a joke to provoke the pm's hilarious 'riposte'.perhaps it took him the week to think of a put-down to cables 'bean' jibe.chief economist at shell-clearly vince cable is an economics pygmie-NOT!
Sniper said ..
"the outright lie over the UK being the second highest defence spender was laughable.
As far as I can see, your references confirm that Brown was telling the truth when he said that Britain had the second highest defence spending.
Gordon's dislocated, his responses to Cameron were dull but also slightly random and inappropriate, what on earth is going on with him? He was certainly calmer and didn't shake with terror or temper but seemed almost out of it. Hardly an improvement.
Verity (ref your 6:55 PM)
Yes, I saw his post but take leave to disagree with him. I did actually challenge him over there about his assessment a week or so back when I didn't agree either! It's perfectly reasonable, after all, for journalists to have their own agendas. He writes for some fairly left wing papers as well as the Speccie. I'm sure Nick Robinson too holds to his opinions despite mutterings (quite often!) here.
You can see from Iain's commentators here that even discounting the fanatical fringes in either direction there is a range of assessments. So I don't feel any need to modify what I posted earlier here, which was that I rather think Cameron did exactly what he set out to do.
Brown can't win while he has LOSER tattooed on his forehead.
It was at best a draw. Cameron could have wasted Broon by answering the questions.
Broon's stammer is getting worse!
it was a bit stupid of Cameron to go on about 'part time Ministers', when the two men sat either side of him were Andrew 'Bank Manager' Mitchell, and William Hangue.
According to the register, Andrew Mitchell enjoys six directorships, gets up to a £40k salary from Accenture, and has interests in two investment companies.
According to those I know who know his team, he spends several hours a day working for Lazard, and is regularly overseas on work for the bank!
Hardly what you would call a full time position is it!
Henry Rogers - Yes, I take your point.
Dave Cameron wasted a golden opportunity to knock one of Brown's history referrals yesterday when Brown claimed that 10 years ago NuLab inherited a Tory financial mess. WRONG! That was the last time that our economy was sound! It was also the last time that our Balance of Payments was in positive balance. Ever since the economy has been borrow, borrow, borrow!
Simon Hoggart in this morning's Grauniad seems to agree with my post at 5.36 PM last night. "cruel spectacle ... getting rather painful to watch."
Michael Martin is the worst Speaker that I can remember, his bias is obvious. Don't forget that he was only elected Speaker when Labour decided that the political wing of the British people did not need to follow House of Commons conventions and elect a Conservative Speaker in 1997.
Trumpeter Lanfried
Totally agree with you, Brown is unable to reply meaningfully to questions at PMQ's, he's weirdly disconnected.
Simon Hoggart is a cruel treat today!
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2222778,00.html
"They laugh at Gordon Brown. Sometimes the house is like a medieval village green where cruel boys throw insults and fruit at the local idiot, who shouts back and waves his arms like a broken windmill."
Not a sheep said...
"Labour decided that the political wing of the British people did not need to follow House of Commons conventions and elect a Conservative Speaker in 1997."
More coincidence than convention. The first ever Labour Speaker was Dr Horace King who was appointed in 1965.
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