There was only the faintest of thuds as a small bag of marbles hit the bullet-proof glass. Few MPs even noticed as a man was bundled out of the public gallery by a Commons’ doorkeeper. Projectile protests have been downgraded to the ranks of futile gesture ever since a protective screen was put in place after Tony Blair was hit by a purple flour bomb in 2004, and the object of this particular futile gesture was never made clear.
Though it did work well enough as a piece of situationist theatre to demonstrate the futility of the exchanges between David Cameron and Ed Miliband at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
The normal structure of PMQs is for the prime minister to answer the questions. The clue’s in the title. On Wednesday, though, Cameron behaved as if he were preparing for opposition. Before Miliband had a chance to catch the eye of the Speaker, the prime minister was on the offensive. “The OECD wants to carry out a comparative study looking at the English NHS and the Welsh NHS,” he said. “I support it doing that – does Mr Miliband?”
When Miliband chose to ignore the question and ask one of his own, Cameron went into huff mode. “Absolutely no answer to the question,” he declared, before turning round to smirk at his colleagues. And that was about as good as it got. “I’m not going to admit the NHS in England is a bit crap unless you admit the NHS in Wales is even more rubbish. So there,” the prime minister pouted, his ears turning pink.
“Well I’m not going to admit the NHS in Wales is a bit crap unless you admit the NHS in England is even more rubbish. So double there,” Miliband grumped.
Two eight-year-olds on a Haribo sugar rush could have done better. The sound of terminally ill cancer patients being kicked back and forth across Offa’s Dyke was drowned out by the ever more contrived roars of support from the backbenches.
It ended in a typical stand-off. “You’re a useless leader. No one in your party likes you,” said pot. “It’s you that’s the useless leader. No one likes you,” replied kettle. If someone had told them they were both right they might have kissed and made up.
With Miliband left to sulk and chat to Ed Balls about how he had actually won the argument, Cameron spent most of the rest of the half-hour session fielding vital questions from loyal Tories on the success of the government’s long-term economic plan in a newsagent in Worcester and a sandwich shop in Basingstoke.
So much more important than the National Audit Office’s report on immigration, the suitability of Fiona Woolf to head the child abuse enquiry, or the elevation of the head of MigrationWatch to the Lords.
The prime minister did, though, squeeze in a mention of the peerage he gave the Speaker’s long-term feudee, the recently retired clerk of the Commons, Sir Robert Rogers. The Bercow haters, of which there are many, fed eagerly on this scrap; for them the session hadn’t been entirely wasted after all. For everyone else the ennui was overwhelming.
Parliamentary business has become an extended election campaign. At this rate, it’s going to be a long seven months. Too many more PMQs like this and it won’t be just a protester who loses his marbles.
