For all the noise and fury about the ‘banning’ of Christmas, the last PMQ of 2007 passed without any Yuletide references.It was a rather tame affair, with David Cameron tackling the Prime Minister over a new bonus scheme for Navy and Marines personnel. At these PMQ, Cameron seems to veer from excellent to autistic on a weekly basis.
The comparison with his first go at Mr Blair a year ago could not have been more striking. Cameron managed to ask a question of such stunning boredom that not even his febrile backbenchers seemed in the least bit interested.
Allowances are complex, the Prime Minister told MPs, and then launched into such a convoluted explanation of the current system. He spoke for well over a minute, and there was nothing MPs could do – he had to explain to the House how the allowance scheme works.
His use of the phrase “accumulated turbulence” caused a few laughs. The thrust of his response was that everyone would be getting more money one way or another.
Drowning in a sea of information, Mr Cameron commented that a revival of Yes, Minister with Mr Blair as Sir Humphrey would work. He then mumbled some nonsense about sending an appalling message to the troops and moved onto the Health Service. Poor central management is the problem. Oh no it isn’t said the PM. Oh yes it is! Punch and Judy live on.
Cameron finished his supplementaries with a half-hearted attempt to rally his troops, calling Mr Blair a lame duck and saying he, “should give us all an early Christmas present and tell us when he is off!” OK so I lied, there was one Xmas comment, but really it could have been anytime of year in the chamber, such was the torpor.
The lack of end-of-term levity was not helped by an odd intervention from Ming Campbell. The serial killer on the loose in Ipswich had been the subject of the second question, with local MP Chris Mole speaking at his “horror at events.” With five local prostitutes disappeared, the PM voiced his support for the police and sympathised with the, “understandable fear in the community.”
David Cameron said, “we all want this monster to be caught and” well he said locked up as opposed to strung up. He is such a new Tory. The events in Ipswich seemed to have been covered, when the LibDem leader asked two of the most ill-judged points of his handful of PMQ appearances.
“What is going on in Suffolk shows the link between poverty, prostitution and drug abuse,” he told the PM, who looked stunned that Ming would choose this moment to make a whole range of assumptions about the disappeared women. Mr Blair cautiously navigated this minefield, “there may well be lessons, but they will be learnt in a considered way.”
It is wise to leave policy responses to a later date, the PM warned. Ming pressed on, asking for a change of the law to “ensure the safety of women.” If the LibDem leader really does want to be an advocate for the decriminalisation of prostitution, he picked the worst moment to raise it.
The rest of the session was the usual nonsense: canals, wind power, fat children, closed swimming pools, the usual municipal nonsense.
Denis MacShane got told to shut up by the Speaker for asking a question that was about the Tories and not the Government. MPs almost laughed, but as ever it was the old dogs, unable to learn new tricks, who save the day with an old one.
Sir Peter Tapsell had MPs on all sides cheering as this Tory veteran, who first entered the House in 1959, rose majestically from the middle benches opposite the Prime Minister. In an impossibly grand aristocratic lisping voice, Sir Peter gave the young Blair a bloody good blast of old-school Tory contempt:
“As the Prime Minister is so fond of apologising to foreigners, will he now apologise to the British people for his own folly in leading us into Iraq?”
Oh but dear reader, it was the way he bellowed out the word ‘foreigner’ in a way that implied outrage and slight disgust that there are people out there who just aren’t British, damn it.
As that old charmer Tony Blair commented, rarely is the word foreigner expressed with such strong emotion.
So the only memorable outburst in the last PMQ of 2006 was from Sir Peter Tapsell. Cameron no doubt will have him booted up to the House of Lords come the next election, but I bet 10 of the A-List would not be able to replace him.
