PMQs sketch: No Winners here

Wednesday, 27 April 2011 12:00 AM

No one is quite sure whether David Cameron was sexist to call Angela Eagle "dear". It's these grey areas which make the British so awkward.

By Alex Stevenson

It seemed like such a natural response for the prime minister to make. We were at the tail end of yet another prime minister's questions. Ed Miliband had, once again, put in a fine performance - and then failed to come up with any kind of knockout blow. His fizzling usually gives Cameron the opportunity to recover with a decent finish.

Not today. He was just beginning to wind up for his finishing flourish when the prime ministerial attention began to waver. How was he supposed to read out a quote from a former MP with that loud buzzing in his ear? This was Angela Eagle, whose shrill tones were pointing out that the MP in question had stood down - not been kicked out by a Tory.

Cameron responded in the way prime ministers always do when confronted with heckling opposition politicians: being patronising. "Calm down, dear," he said, a la Michael Winner, the beaming, bumbling film director and critic who epitomises smugness.

This may have been a mistake, for uproar followed. In the press gallery in Westminster, at least, it still hasn't quite died down.

The demands for him to apologise started almost immediately. Literally, in fact, as just seconds later Cameron was heard in the Commons refusing to say sorry. Labour spinners in the press gallery didn't hesitate to run with it, calling the prime minister "sexist", "patronising" and "insulting".

The awkward, guilty look on the prime minister's face seemed to suggest he realised he might have gone a bit far. Not that he was going to back down, of course, for to do so would have been truly catastrophic. This was one of those days to jump in the car and scurry back to Downing Street, leaving the opposition wailing in protest.

One thing is now clear: the row over 'Winnergate', as Labour are hoping this will become known, has touched a peculiarly sensitive spot in the British psyche.

Both sides will feel their viewpoint is justified. With crucial local elections just eight days away, any kind of gut instinct political kerfuffle - and there is no doubt that is what this is - is to be seized with both hands. Eagle has an impressive brain, and uses it to devastating effect whenever she happens to be in the Treasury or playing chess. Calling her "dear" may not have been the pleasantest move.

But it was not much worse than innocuous, surely? Most clever women would take the remark in the tone it was intended - something falling far short of seriously. In the fevered atmosphere of prime minister's questions, normal human social mores tend to be suspended. These get in the way of a good knockabout, after all. But then, perhaps that depends on the eye of the beholder. A spectator mindful of gender equality might view things very differently indeed.

This was neither a terrible thing to say, nor especially appropriate. But it is these grey areas which make the British so awkward. And it's that awkwardness which makes the prospect of this row so appealing.

"This is no laughing matter," a Labour spinner remarked to journalists in the press gallery afterwards. There was more than a twinkle of amusement in his eye as he did so.

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• sketch