PMQs: Brown challenged on Scottish referendum and early-release schemes

1.15pm: Our summary (view the chatroom below it for many more comments)...

To much cheering Brown welcomed the "new Mayor of London to the House", Cameron joined the PM in congratulating Boris - who was in the House - on "his magnificent victory". The Labour benches were understandably quiet today.

• Shailesh Vara MP got the first question and asked if Brown could use his experience at unseating a sitting Prime Minister to estimate how long he has got left? Later, Nigel Evans asked if Brown understood how angry people were about the tax increases and if he will propose ditching them before his colleagues ditch him. And James Gray added to the taunts in asking if he ever wonders why on earth he took the job.
• Cameron, looking very much at ease throughout, asked about Wendy Alexander's comments about having an independence referendum, accuses Brown of being out of touch with reality saying "It's not leadership if nobody is following him" and "The one thing people thought about the PM is that he was quite a good political fixer, but now he is losing control of his Labour Party".
• Cameron moved on to early-release prisoners: "Every week more prisoners are going to be released because of his early-release scheme, the PM isn't listening to people on crime... If the PM is serious about listening to people will he now scrap it?"
• Brown's answers to most points are so repetitive and irrelevant as to be rarely worth repeating. He talked again of Cameron's "slick statesmanship" but Cameron turned it around by referring to Brown's not-so-slick salesmanship when he flogged the country's gold reserves, and told him to give up PR and focus on being PM. He also re-used the discredited line about there being a £10bn "blackhole" in Tory tax plans. Tory backbenchers waved goodbye to Brown during last question
• Clegg asked for concrete proposals on the 10p rate, "when it comes to helping the needy [Brown] has got no principles, the Tories have got no policies".

Following the great feedback we got from the chatroom-style liveblog on election night (5644 comments were submitted during the times when it was live, 1183 didn't get approved in an attempt to avoid repetition) we're using the same software for PMQs today so that you can see our updates on what is happening in realtime. Unlike when we tried this for PMQs in January and February we may compromise in future by taking comments from readers on the post rather than in the actual liveblog so that other readers wanting to catch up on PMQs with a concise record of what happened won't have to wade through the multitude of comments. We intend to have more open chatrooms for programmes like Question Time though, manned by volunteer moderators.

Comments

[Curly]

Does Brown realise that labour were trounced last week, has anybody told him?

He was so out of touch today that he doesn't even know the price of petrol!

[RobC]

Does anyone else notice Brown's unusual pronunciation of certain words? He pronounced ‘devolution’ as ‘Dave-olution’. I’m against devolution, but Dave-olution sounds far more promising.

He also managed to drop the second ‘t’ from ‘constituency’ Previously I’ve also noticed his Del-Boy pronunciation of billions: ‘biw-ions’ Is this standard Scottish pronunciation or just Brown?

[Scott]

How can Labour refuse a Scottish Parliamentary Referendum now? What a disaster Wendy is. V disappointed that Conhome didn’t cover this morning.

Alexander doesn’t even know how the Scottish Parliament works. You can not table a bill on a topic the Scottish Government is already proposing. Thus she has confirmed her support of a referendum, but has no powers to bring it forward?!? You also need two party support to bring such a referendum forward I doubt we or the liberals will be supporting her after her back stabbing. What an idiot? Now she will have to support the 2010 measures. The nats can simply point to their manifesto where it is in black and white that 2010 is the referendum year.

Gordon is obviously severely angry with Wendy and I’d say she is pretty much toast now.

If this is the best defence unionism can muster in Scotland, it's gubbed.

[Kevin Davis]

Why do all the Conservative MP's in your picture look like they have just spent a month in the Bahamas?

[David McEwan Hill]

I watched Wendy Alexander make up this policy as she went along on the Politics Show on Sunday. She has dropped Gordon Brown in it and made it impossible for Labour to oppose a Scottish Indpendence Referendum unless she is deposed - the likeliest outcome I have to say.

[Andrew Morrison]

I wonder if Wendy actually meant to say "come ahead" - she gets so nervous sometimes I bet it was by accident.

Then again, perhaps not. It was her brother Douglas, in co-operation with Ed Balls, who helped provoke the 'election that never was' last August, giving The Great Leader his 'Bottler Brown' reputation.

Perhaps 'premature electioneering' runs in the Alexander household?

There is logic to this however, and as a Scottish Conservative supporter and a Unionist (albiet one in favour of full fiscal autonomy) I say we should have this silly referendum and get it out of the way.

I believe the SNP will increase their majority at the next election, which will be in 2011/2012.

I expect this will be a couple of years after David Cameron becomes Prime Minister of Britain with a spectacular majority.

The Lefties in Scotland - and let's face it, there are a lot of the whining, self-pitying bunch here - will be up revelling in their victim status at the hands of the "big bad Tories" by then and could swing the referendum vote to 'yes'. On that basis, why not rush through this referendum while their beloved Labour party are still in, otherwise this issue may come back in a few years or so.

[Bill Brinsmead]

“The new Mayor of London is one of a number of MPs listening to a question from Nigel Evans MP.”

Were they? I watched the question, really it was another rant from Nigel, and the Tory benches were conspicuously quiet throughout the question and answer.

This was not a sign of approval.