PMQs: Playing it straight

Wednesday, 14 May 2008 12:00 AM

David Cameron spent the last half-hour before Wednesday's draft Queen's Speech gently undermining public confidence in the prime minister.

The Conservative leader's mantra throughout his questions was that Gordon Brown was not being "straight".

Whether it was on the 10p tax debacle, plans for a referendum on Scottish independence, the "cancelled election" or housing minister Caroline Flint's embarrassing pessimism, the refrain was always the same.

"Is that not what we are seeing: a prime minister putting short-term decisions before national interest?" the Tory leader asked.

Mr Brown responded by accusing his opposite number of "playing politics" and repeated last week's "salesman" buzzword. But his responses lacked the coherence of Mr Cameron's bludgeoning repetition.

"Yesterday's announcement had nothing to do with the by-election; another day, another complete failure to be straight with people," Mr Cameron continued.

"Does he not understand that he is never going to get out of the hole he has dug for himself unless he starts being straight with people?"

"Can he take this one chance to be straight with people?"

"Is not a big part of the disastrous premiership his failure to be straight with people?"

We get the idea.

Mr Brown's biggest failure, it seems, may be about lacking a driven-home soundbite in response.

The prime minister deployed all the usual tactics, of course, although he has finally started scaling back on reeling off the same-old same-old lists of Labour's record in government since 1997.

Instead the prime minister has shifted in the last month or so towards an 'I-know-better' approach to Mr Cameron, rather like that of a berating parent expressing disappointment about the behaviour of an errant son.

"I thought that the Conservative party would want to join the Labour party," he said on the union, before adding in general "it is about time that instead of being the salesman, he started showing some substance about policy".

Mr Brown, of course, can play havoc with Mr Cameron's own past record when he wants to. He attempted it today, tying him to Black Wednesday when he was adviser to the chancellor, but this was hardly the clunking fist.

It seems, in terms of soundbites, it is Mr Cameron rather than Mr Brown who has learned the lessons of Tony Blair's premiership.

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