PMQs sketch: Cameron explosion blasts Brown
Wednesday, 10 March 2010 12:00 AM
A massive blast rocked the Commons chamber this lunchtime. Fortunately for the nation, this was not a terrorist attack. It was David Cameron losing his temper.
The Conservative leader was detonated by Labour backbenchers who, for shame, shouted 'Tory' as Cameron raised former defence chiefs' "disingenuous" accusations about Gordon Brown's Iraq inquiry evidence.
"Oh!" Cameron shouted in mid-sentence. "It's because they're Tories, is it? That's it, is it?"
The Tory backbenches erupted in support, pointing in unison to a small group of cowering Labour figures to the prime minister's right.
"That is what this tribalist, divisive government thinks about people who serve their country," Cameron bellowed. "I think first of all this prime minister should get up and disassociate himself completely from what those people have said!"
Brown was, unsurprisingly, a little shell-shocked by this sudden blast of rage. He muttered about cross-party "common cause" support for vehicles, equipment, in a pitiable display. Brown wasn't on the back foot; to be in that position you have to be standing up, but he was already on the floor.
In what seemed like no time at all Cameron was back on the attack, yelling furiously as the entire Tory parliamentary party bellowed and screeched behind him.
"His members of parliament have questioned the integrity of people who served this country, fought for this country, who are essays in bravery of this country," he seethed, looking more like a worked-up Shakespearian actor than a politician.
"He's got to get to this despatch box and disassociate himself from those disgraceful remarks," Cameron ordered.
There is no other way of describing the prime minister's response. He grovelled. "Mr Speaker, I have never at any time criticised the patriotism of anyone who has been involved in the defence establishment of this country," he snivelled, looking as he if might be about to burst into tears.
This amounted to effectively obeying Cameron's imperious command. Brown never recovered. Even when he sought to land some Ashcroft-based punches in response they were limply delivered, with Brown already sitting down and looking away as he finished.
As any missile expert will tell you, it's all about delivery. The PM may have been well off-target, but Cameron's slings and arrows certainly found their mark.
That would have been that, had it not been for the leader of the opposition getting a little carried away.
Had he stuck to further character assassinations the session would have been an easy victory. If Cameron had continued to lambast the Labour backbenchers he could have been forgiven.
But claiming the Conservatives were solely responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union seemed to be taking things a little too far.
"Under the Conservatives we won the cold war!" might seem, on paper, like a perfectly reasonable response to Brown's statement that defence spending had been cut in the decade before 1997.
In 2010, in the chamber of the House of Commons, it was an utterly absurd thing to say. The bruised and battered Labour MPs leapt on the slip, returning Tory bile with everything they could muster. This session had almost nothing to do with the prime minister, but they didn't seem to mind.
John Bercow sounds like he has lost his temper every time he barks "order!" Unlike Cameron when he lost his rag no one listened, so the shouting just went on and on. He is, perhaps, a true casualty of (political) war.
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