Even the backbenchers have had enough. Prime minister’s questions usually guarantees a full house, but this week there was plenty of green leather on view. There is only so much deja vu anyone can take.
In a recent poll, almost none of the electorate had any idea there was a row going on about the televised leaders’ debates. Westminster and the media have been talking about little else over the past week, so naturally this was what Ed Miliband chose to make the entire focus of his six questions. If you can’t talk to yourself, who can you talk to?
“Less than two months ago,” he began, “the prime minister said in this house that he wanted a head-to-head debate between me and him. He said it was game on. When did he lose his nerve?”
The opposition benches duly made some chicken noises. More out of duty than anything else. Their leader had tried this line of the attack the previous week and made little headway.
David Cameron looked unruffled. He knows some people think he’s running scared. He knows he’s a hypocrite. But he also knows that most people don’t give a damn one way or the other and that he can make it up as he goes along. He pulled out his diary. “I have told the leader of the opposition that I have a 10-minute window between 6.33pm and 6.43pm on the evening of 23 March,” he declared. “Why won’t he meet me then?”
Miliband reprised the “any time, any place, anywhere” Martini advert. This wasn’t a wonderful world Dave wanted to share. Dave wanted to share his dark and disturbing apocalyptic visions of a post-election multiverse in which Miliband was in two places at once. Hanging on the coat-tails of Alex Salmond. And in Salmond’s pocket. It was a dystopian hell in which no metaphor would go unmixed.
Forget Putin. Compared with Salmond, he was a pussycat. Forget Isis. Compared with Scotland, Syria was a promised land. If Labour were to form a coalition with the SNP, Jihadi Alex would behead every true-born English child and lay waste to every village fete. Michael Gove’s head bobbed up and down like a nodding dog. You get the feeling that the Tories might have already given up on Scotland.
The prime minister asked: “Who knows who you can wake up in bed with after 8 May?” Nick Clegg covered his face; five years on he is still stricken by Camerydia – a sexually transmitted disease that has proved politically fatal. That, though, was nothing compared to the possibility of SNPhilis. Drop your guard for even a second on 7 May and any unsuspecting sleeping Tories would be ravaged by any number of vile and depraved acts of congress. “What a despicable and weak thing to do, risking our defences,” Dave insisted. The country needed a prophylactic and Dave was prepared to be that condom. Steve Bell couldn’t believe his luck.
Now in the home straight, Dave made a dash for the finishing line. “While the leader of the opposition wastes time talking about debates, the country is crying out for strong leadership,” he said. “We stand at a crossroads in history. The future of Top Gear hangs in the balance.” Go to bed with Dave and you could wake up with Jihadi Jeremy.
