Not too happy about that: Harman relegated herself to the opposition today

PMQs sketch: Harman becomes the opposition

PMQs sketch: Harman becomes the opposition

Harman damages Hague – but somewhere along the way, they swap places.

By Ian Dunt

Harriet Harman was so desperate to attack William Hague over the Ashcroft affair today she inadvertently slipped into becoming the opposition.

It didn’t help, of course, that she referred to the shadow foreign secretary as the foreign secretary. That’s the kind of thing they bleed you for in the Commons. She was barely aware it had happened. No matter what was said to her, you could see her brain darting around inside itself, desperately trying to find a hook, an angle, with which to bring up the Ashcroft dilemma.

This morning’s Guardian was her briefing paper. It revealed that Hague wrote to Tony Blair a decade ago saying Michael Ashcroft “is committed to becoming resident”. He did no such thing, of course, and Labour gleefully sent out emails to journalists with transcripts of Hague’s various interviews on the topic, all of which come across as evasive, at best. (Hague: ‘I’ve no reason to think that he’s not complied with the commitments that he gave.’ Paxman: ‘That is not the same as an assurance that he is?’ Hague: ‘Well it’s the truth as I know it.’)

But the former Tory leader is a frightfully clever man and he can be given the kudos of having emerged from this battle about as well as one can imagine anyone emerging. That is: bruised but not actually physically dead.

“That’s the second time she’s called me foreign secretary,” he said. “It’s as if we’ve had the election already.” That inadvertently gave Harman her ‘in’.

Hague “assumes he will remain in his position and I wonder about that”, she said, damagingly. She then claimed the House “puts value on integrity” (don’t laugh) and that “the country had been misled”.

The noise became impossible. It was probably the loudest, most sustained bout of shouting I have ever heard in the House. Speaker John Bercow was reduced to something resembling a PE teacher as he begged for order. He recognised what Harman was trying to do, however. She was turning herself into the opposition. “We must get back to government business,” he pleaded. He was probably the only human in the room who really wished this. The hacks only bothered listening when the name ‘Ashcroft’ was mentioned. All parties felt the same, even the Tories, because despite the damage they love a bit of Commons knockabout as much as anyone.

They had more to cheer when Hague made his most effective counter-attack, telling the leader of the House that “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. He reminded her that her husband (the Unite union’s deputy general secretary) had just been selected as a Labour candidate from an all-woman short list. “She might not recognise marriage in the tax system but she certainly does in the political system,” he said.

Harman shot back: “The question isn’t about one man in the House of Commons but one man in the House of Lords.” She was the one asking questions, all of a sudden. Again Bercow tried to remind the House that this is prime minister’s question time, as in: the time when the prime minister is asked questions, not a period when questions are thrown around in the prime minister’s presence. Although, to be fair, the PM was busy wining and dining the president of South Africa, so perhaps Harman became confused. There was some speculation that Brown had stepped out of the session (totally unnecessary for a state visit) so Hague would have to go up in David Cameron’s place, but most of us refused to give Labour enough credit for such tactical brilliance.

Harman’s voice suddenly reached a pitch we had never really heard before, but one that was entirely unpleasant. “Mr Speaker, this is a matter outside of this House.”

But Bercow was unimpressed. “The government backbenchers are getting too excited,” he pointed out. This was true. They were overjoyed, like a party of eight-year-old boys given Modern Warfare 2.

“They should enjoy it while they’re still here, Mr Speaker,” Hague smirked.

But Harman managed to shut down the debate with a sentence which resonated far wider than the hollow noise it was greeted with would have you believe. “We cannot have it that both the vice chairman of the Conservative party is right and the shadow foreign secretary is right,” she said. “One of them should go.”

It is a credit to his considerable parliamentary skills that Hague made it out of the session covered in blood and bruises. He should have been dead in the water. It is a testimony to Harman’s larynx that she can still reach pitches none of us ever knew existed.

The sad part is that these two have always appeared to admire each other, and their exchanges usually resemble respectable differences of opinion, robustly expressed. But party politics is party politics and given the ammunition she had today, Harman had to try to destroy him.