PMQs were even more eagerly anticipated than usual today, given the incendiary allegations published in the Observer on Sunday, the flames of which had been fanned by Alistair Darling’s assertion on Sky News that No 10 had “unleashed the forces of hell” against him in 2008 for daring to predict (correctly, as it transpired) that the recession would be the worst for 60 years.
Would there, we wondered, be a certain froideur evident between the PM and his next-door neighbour? Would they each sit at extreme ends of the front bench, legs crossed in opposite directions, and stare at the rafters? Would the body language, in short, be bloody?
As it turned out, when Gordon and Alistair arrived they were joined at the hip. Literally. They entered the chamber in a curious manner similar to the sub-conga shuffle formerly adopted by the 80s pop group, Madness, Darling almost physically attached to the back of the PM’s jacket, both grinning self-consciously. You couldn’t put a cigarette paper between them.
They sat down together. Very close together. An ironic cheer erupted and the Speaker had to ask us all to settle down.
Of course, David Cameron asked Brown about the briefings against Alistair. I mean, he had to. There was an open goal and it would have been unprofessional, indeed disrespectful of the PM, not to have a crack at it. Gordon, intensely discomfited, affected a sort of hysterical insouciance by pretending to chat cosily with Alistair, who, in fairness, played along and chatted back. It didn’t deter Cameron:
Mr. Cameron: Just as we need openness in the health service, we need openness at the heart of Government. After the Chancellor’s extraordinary statement last night, the Prime Minister said this morning on GMTV:
“I would never instruct anybody to do anything other than support my Chancellor”.
Will he try to stand up with a straight face and tell us that that is true?
The Prime Minister: Not only is that correct, but this is the nearest that the right hon. Gentleman has ever got to talking about the economy in the past few months.
Not a terribly good answer, but the Labour backbenchers, heavily whipped, roared. Not very enthusiastically, you understand, but roar they did.
Cameron was still undeterred:
Mr. Cameron: If the Prime Minister wants to talk about the economy, we can talk about the Prime Minister trebling the deficit, about wrecking the pension system, about ruining the tax system and about bringing this country to its knees. Right now, six weeks before an election, with a record Budget deficit, at the end of a long recession, I want to ask why the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are at war with each other. This is what we are told—
Gordon and Alistair were continuing their animated love-in, pretending not to listen to the beastly man, their heads almost touching.
Mr. Cameron: If they get any closer, they will start kissing. We are told that Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s spin doctor, was “spreading poison against Darling” and that he
“told every journalist who had access to a pencil that Alistair’s interview was a disaster.”
We are also told that there was the most poisonous briefing against him. Last night, the Chancellor said that after he had said what he had said, No. 10 Downing Street unleashed “the forces of hell”. Why does the Prime Minister think that he said that?
Gordon rose wearily:
The Prime Minister: I have already answered the right hon. Gentleman’s question. I never instructed a briefing against the Chancellor.
And perhaps he didn’t. But he did look extremely uncomfortable.
The session was leavened at its very end by the House’s jester-in-residence, Stephen Pound, Labour Member for Ealing North, who, with a grin spread wide across his Punchinello countenance, asked in stentorian tones:
Stephen Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab): I enjoy a pint of porter and a game of darts as much as any old Etonian, but there the similarity ends. Can I ask my right hon. Friend to strain every sinew to try to achieve an international agreement on a Robin Hood tax, bearing in mind that we all know who in this House speaks for the Sheriff of Nottingham?
Even we laughed at that.
The friendly question had clearly come as a huge relief to the embattled Prime Minister:
The Prime Minister: I cannot beat the humour which my hon. Friend brings to this occasion.
Very true, Gordon. But I’m sure you did your best.
