PMQs - 27th October 2010

We're beginning to see a pattern at PMQs, and it's one that doesn't bode well for Ed Miliband. Aside from one joke about him asking the questions in his first outing two weeks ago, Ed has not really managed to land a powerful blow on the Tory leader. Cameron is a highly able debater, which makes it all the more difficult for Ed to land good blows. Which means that it is all the more important that Labour have a credible economic strategy to beat the Tories around the head with. While they don't, Ed will struggle. 

There wasn't really a lot of substance to this week's outing. Miliband kept pushing on housing benefit but it wasn't very clear where he was going. If he was trying to exploit potential differences between the PM and IDS, as well as others like Simon Hughes, it quickly became apparent that Cameron was going to unequivocally support the changes. And as Cameron was happy to defend it, Ed was left to make (another) attack on the cuts causing unemployment, which was easily deflected by the positive economic news from yesterday. 

The problem Miliband has is that £20,000 per year as a limit is a fair figure, it's a figure that Cameron is sticking with, and one that can be easily defended. As he said, when the government is willing to give people 20,000 per year for housing benefit no-one should go without a home. 

Cameron made excellent use of the Labour PMQs strategy document leaked to the Times today, which encouraged Ed Miliband to use 'mocking humour', develop 'cheer lines' for his backbenchers and the media headline writers, and to go for the 'big prize' of making Cameron look arrogant and patronising by asking simple, straightforward questions. It made the Labour leader look like a novice. 

Ed's best line was a quip about Nick Clegg looking glum and understanding why he's gone back on the fags, after Clegg said he'd have a stash of cigarettes as a luxury on Desert Island Discs. It was funny, but it was purely political and totally irrelevant. He really has to restrain himself from simply going after the Lib Dems when he can't score points against the Conservatives. 

As Cameron said: 'he's got a plan for PMQs but not for the economy.' Until he does he'll struggle. 

Cameron win. 

Watch out Cardiff...

Len McCluskey of the Unite Union has accused Iain Duncan Smith of being unable to shake of the 'vicious Tory determination to make the poor suffer' and said that 'It is clear that the Tory nasty party has never gone away'. The PCS union was equally aggressive, taking the obvious line by calling IDS a 'Tebbit clone'.

What did IDS do to deserve this attack? He suggested that people may not be being realistic if they waited for a job to become available in their home town: 'The truth is there are jobs. They may not absolutely be in the town you are living in. They may be in a neighbouring town... We need to recognise the jobs often don't come to you. Sometimes you need to go to the jobs.' Using Merthyr Tydfil as an example, he said people had become 'static' and that they 'didn't know if they got on a bus an hour's journey they'd be in Cardiff and they could look for a job there.'

McCluskey then pulled out my personal favourite comment: 'Cant the ConDem coalition really believe that the unemployment being created by savage government cuts will be fixed by having people wandering across the country with their meagre possessions crammed into the luggage racks of buses?'

You've got to love the unions. I mean, they're great when they're defending an individual teacher falsely accused by a student or a council employee hounded out by an overbearing chief executive, but they just lose the plot when it comes to national issues. The simple PR problem they have is that people switch off when they hear rhetoric like that. No-one really believes that there will be Indian-like bus trips with bundles of luggage falling from the roof down the M4 to Cardiff, it's just not credible...