Cameron asks Blair about the Chancellor's unpopularity with his colleagues

David Cameron accused the Government of breaking a promise to increase the number of NHS beds by 7,000.  The Tory leader said that the number of beds had actually fallen by a similar amount.

After questions on the NHS, David Cameron asked Tony Blair about the Milburn-Clarke policy debate meeting.  The Prime Minister said that he was "delighted that a full policy debate is happening in the Labour party."  Referring to Frank Field's intervention of last weekend the Conservative leader said: "The Prime Minister seems to think the Chancellor is Einstein but half the backbenchers think he is Mrs Rochester. Why do you not let him out of the attic?"

Ming Campbell asked about missile defence and when the Government would present its plans to the Commons.  The issue (discussed on ConservativeHome on Sunday) would be brought before the House, Mr Blair suggested, when the Government had something definite to say.

Comments

[simon]

I don't know why i bother watching PMEQ's! Rory Bremner has it spot on! Unlike last week , i thought Cameron was shi*e! It appears to be the same attack every 2 weeks ( ie) Brown is crap, can Bliar f- off, and can we have a general election)! I give up (until next week)! Whoever is doing the questions for DC is doing him and the party a dis-service. I now have to watch PMEQ's through my hands due to the sheer bloody embarrasment of the pantomime on offer.

[Andrew Woodman]

I really think DC should lay off that attacks on Brown. We don't want Labour not to choose him do we!!!

[Ed Clarke]

Agree with Andrew Woodman - DC should be underlining Labour's failures not focussing on the Blair/Brown struggle. Conservatives should hope that Blair holds on for as long as possible and then is replaced by Brown so that Brown can be attacked head-on for the rest of the Parliament.

We don't want Labour to "renew" itself!

[Graham D'Amiral]

I thought DC did both well today, attacked Labour's policy failings on health, then embarrassed them over their leadership worries.

[Deborah]

PMQs? Boring and irrelevant, yet again.

[Phil Whittington]

Speaking personally, I love PMQs although don't watch it as often as I used to. I think DC is very good, although arguably not quite in the league of William Hague or Michael Howard.

I don't think Labour has any choice but to pick Brown - if this is the case then there is not much point in letting Blair out of having to defend the indefensible every week.

I think so long as Cameron always mixes the Blair-Brown issue with a point on policy - which he does - this is fine.

If Labour ditches Brown and picks some wizz-bang charismatic young leader, I'm sure we will all rue the day Cameron's attack on Brown preciptated this, but I just can't see that this will happen!

PW

[Doris Bonkers]

Why is George Burns (sans trademark glasses and cigar) sitting behind the Dear Leader (peace be upon Him)?

He's looking a little old and haggard now isn't he?

[Doris Bonkers]

Why is George Burns (sans trademark glasses and cigar) sitting behind the Dear Leader (peace be upon Him)?

He's looking a little old and haggard now isn't he?

[Rob]

I think Cameron did OK, but some of his sound bites miss the mark. How many viewers will get the Mrs Rochester jibe? I think many will have missed the connection to Frank Field's comment, and many more won't even get the literary reference. Reminds me of the time he said he has been "bunched" by the Prime Minister. Left me scratching my head.

Phil mentions Michael Howard above. He really put some bite into proceedings! You could look forward to it each week and expect some blood on the carpet.

[Peter Hatchet]

Simon:

You could equally say that Blair says the same cr*p every week. a) to all written questions he says; "he will further such meetings later today", (b) to Tories he says their last government was rubbish, his is brilliant and they'd just cut spending & investment and (c) he ignores/berates the Liberals.

Because virtually no-one watches it PMQ's is just about getting a soundbite on the evening news. Jibes and jokes seem to get noticed so they get reported. Nothing else.

[Matt Davis]

The fact that Michael Howard was perceived to be so good at PMQ's but then got sorely beaten at the GE just shows how irrelevent PMQ's is to the electorate, even if us anoraks like it.

[Soupy Twist]

PMQs is a disgrace

I wish DC had stayed off the Punch and Judy politics and shamed Blair into giving serious answers to serious questions

BTW all of this stuff about Howard and Hague being brilliant is nonsense

Howard was just offputting, and Hague despite some wonderful one-liners (thanks to D. Finkelstein) was after a while regularly trounced by the PM

New Labour will always out-talk their opponents, but they are allergic to the truth -- let's give them some

[Graeme Archer]

I think the main point of PMQs is for the incredulous outsider - i.e. us - to remind ourselves that we're not imagining the psychotic, delusional nature of our current Prime Minister. It's starting to feel almost unethical for him to be allowed to carry on.

I thought the Mrs Rochester reference was splendid, but then I would, being a nerd. I snorted into my tea with the pleasure you get when you answer the first question on University Challenge correctly. Presumably not David's target demographic!

[Valedictoryan]

"I thought the Mrs Rochester reference was splendid"

Me too. You don't have to know Mrs Rochester in order to understand that it was an apt intellectual put-down and, being an apt intellectual put-down, I'm sure it was appreciated by Lib-Dem intellectual types.

[Phil Whittington]

I understand the points raised above since I posted earlier, but I see it differently. Saying that Howard and Hague were excellent at PMQ and lost elections shows merely that being good a Commons performer is not sufficient for electoral success.

I would argue that it is necessary. Many accounts, particularly of Hague's time in office, testify that however disunited the Conservatives were, they became temporarily happier for the minor victories every Wednesday lunch time.

Had Hague not had that skill, he would have found leading the party through its most difficult phase of modern times even more arduous. And the malaise in the party would have grown so that we party supporters would have been derided even more than we were every time the Conservatives came up in conversation.

PMQs doesn't have great traction with a public that is at work during the day and sees only 10 seconds of Cameron in the Chamber every Wednesday evening, but it can serve as a tremendous morale boost to the anoraks (aka those who deliver leaflets and stand for the party in no-hope wards etc)

My view is that Cameron is a good performer in the House and should carry on with attacking the Blair-Brown rift, as long as he mixes it with policy questions too, as he seems to have done.

[David Belchamber]

PMQs has been reduced to farce and is now a waste of time and money.

The PM hardly deigns to appear in the HoC apart from PMQs and then he refuses to answer questions from DC - merely parroting his prepared spiel that makes absolutely no attempt to answer any sensible question that might have been asked.

The second, more irritating, thing is the soft balls served up by his own backbenchers, so that the PM can set off on another prepared bout of self-congratulation.

Cannot the Speaker be invited to contain the PM and call him to account?

One question DC might try and get the PM to answer is: why has dentistry virtually disappeared from the NHS?

No doubt the PM will tell us that never before has so much money been lavished on the NHS etc etc

[Graham D'Amiral]

PMQS has always been punch & Judy politics in its full glory, I just don't buy the argument that it has degenerated in to that state more recently. It provides MP's with the only really opportunity they have to put the PM under a bit of pressure.

Absolutely right to say being brilliant at PMQs is no guarantee of electoral success, but you can be certain being bad at it is sure sign of a leader not up to the job.

[Jay]

I wouldn't be surprised if one of Brown's first moves in his 100 day blitz is to abolish PMQs, all in the name of "cleaning up politics" of course

I just can't see Brown been able to handle it.

[Seb]

I really now believe that it WILL NOT be Brown!

[Yet Another Anon]

No sign of any other cabinet or former cabinet ministers standing against Gordon Brown, John McDonnell doesn't look likely to get enough nominations to proceed to the ballot paper and even if he did he wouldn't stand a chance, Michael Meacher will get on the ballot paper but doesn't stand a chance - he might have had a chance if Labour was in opposition and recriminating.

Really there is no point asking Tony Blair about Gordon Brown at PMQ's because no one expects him to answer anything and his successor is not really part of his remit as PM so it ends up being one sided commentary that Tony Blair can just brush aside.

[James Maskell]

The Rochester jibe was one that came from the papers. Hardly original. This was a poor performance from Cameron. Hes been doing this strategy of attacking on a key issue of the moment with the first three then going all childish with jobes and jokes at Blairs expense with the remaining three. The last three always miss the mark because we already know hes going. We need to use all six to smack him around the head over his failure in Government not joke about him.

[simon]

If DC wants to attack the govt, as well as swiping at Broon, he could look at Broon's old speeches that refers to 'scottishness'- and how that equates to his (and the govt's)new penchant for 'britishness'. If it's alright for the 'scots' to be 'scottish' , why cannot the 'english' be 'english'? I may have said this week's perf by DC was woeful, but Blair's perf's are usually evasive and deviod of reality. Par for the course!