David Cameron called Edward Miliband ‘a complete mug’. Mr Miliband’s crime had been to ask the PM to name some policies he might try to renegotiate with the European Union.
One’s reaction to the ‘mug’ insult should perhaps begin with the words, ‘be that as it may…’.
Mr Miliband is, like a fat autumn bluebottle, eminently swattable. Were he a squash ball one could derive hours of satisfaction thwacking him against the back wall.
If manufacturers produced a boxing punchbag which carried an image of Mr Miliband’s goofy features – a target mark on that hooter of his, perhaps – it would surely become a must-have object for many gymnasia in England. And yet, and yet.
If manufacturers produced a boxing punchbag which carried an image of Mr Miliband¿s goofy feature it would surely become a must-have object for many gymnasia in England
If manufacturers produced a boxing punchbag which carried an image of Mr Miliband¿s goofy feature it would surely become a must-have object for many gymnasia in England
The Labour leader’s questions yesterday were reasonable. They shrewdly explored divisions between Mr Cameron and the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.
Pale Mr Clegg sat beside Mr Cameron in the Chamber yesterday. The Lib Dem leader looked blithely unfazed by the damage his Europhilia is causing to the stability of our Government (and therefore to the prospects of our economy). If anyone is a complete mug, it may be Cleggy.
Mr Cameron could have used the public nature of PMQs to create pressure on Mr Clegg.
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He could also have urged Mr Miliband to be patient because all would become apparent in due course.
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Instead he called his opponent ‘a complete mug who wants no rebalancing (of our relationship with Europe) at all’.
His tone was high-pitched, shrill. There was much noise in the House and the ‘complete mug’ line brought a crescendo of yaa-booery from the Tory benches at the Big Ben end of the Chamber. Tories who are less enthusiastic about Mr Cameron tend to sit at the other end of the ground.
Bernard Jenkin (Con, N Essex) had moved down there yesterday and had pinged in an early question about Europe which had been more like an A level essay topic than a soundbite.
But back to ‘a complete mug’. Do we really want our Prime Minister, at a time of national danger, to refer to the Leader of the Opposition in so sweepingly scornful a manner?
There is a place in politics for vituperation. Your sketchwriter is first to assert his right to call Mr Miliband a twazzock and worse.
But the Prime Minister is not a low denizen of Grub Street. Leave the insults to us professionals, matey!
He is supposedly a statesman, about to negotiate in fraught international meetings. I am not sure that ‘a complete mug’ was helpful.
Do we really want our Prime Minister, at a time of national danger, to refer to the Leader of the Opposition in so sweepingly scornful a manner?
Do we really want our Prime Minister, at a time of national danger, to refer to the Leader of the Opposition in so sweepingly scornful a manner?
It sounded unattractive.Throughout his exchanges with Mr Miliband, the Prime Minister was tetchy, defensive, evasive.
Until this crisis abates we could do with something slightly more considered, please.
Behind him yesterday, where his PPS Desmond Swayne normally sits, perched Laura Sandys (Con, S Thanet), in an amazingly jazzy dress.
Television viewers may well have been leaping for their horizontal hold buttons. How convenient it was for Mr Cameron to have the unmissable Miss Sandys there.
A Labour MP asked why female voters were not more keen on the Coalition. Miss Sandys was a vivid symbol that the Government is not entirely blokeish.
Pale Mr Clegg sat beside Mr Cameron in the Chamber yesterday. The Lib Dem leader looked blithely unfazed
Pale Mr Clegg sat beside Mr Cameron in the Chamber yesterday. The Lib Dem leader looked blithely unfazed
Labour’s Chief Whip Rosie Winterton was not to be outdone. I am not saying that chubby-cheeked Rosie, yesterday in knee-high boots and orange weeds, is a patron of sunbed parlours.
Let us simply note that she was the colour of a grilled chicken thigh. She didn’t get that colour by sitting in a back garden in her Doncaster constituency.
Mr Cameron later recovered some of his poise. And then Labour let itself down.
Harriet Baldwin (Con, W Worcs) asked about nursery schools and began her question by saying, ‘when I worked in the private sector’.
Labour MPs, en masse: ‘Wooooo!’. Would they have sneered like that at a mention of trade unionism?
Of course not. But to the parliamentary Labour party, or large parts of it at any rate, the private sector remains something alien, to be mocked.
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