Using Commons political theatre to try to exit on a high note

LONDON LETTER|:Gordon Brown ensured PMQs were part of the first week of his election campaign, but they are an insider's sport of less concern to those outside the Westminster village

PRIME MINISTER’S Questions in the House of Commons yesterday began as it has every week in the lifetime of this fast-fading parliament, with the listing of the UK’s latest war dead.

Some weeks the list has been short, some weeks it seemed to go on forever.

Yesterday, there were two names to be read out by prime minister Gordon Brown before questions could formally start: Rifleman Mark Turner from the Third Battalion, The Rifles, and Guardsman Michael Sweeney of the Coldstream Guards – both engaged to be married, both killed last week in Afghanistan.

They were, he said, “owed an immeasurable debt of gratitude”. The House murmured its approval.

Since the UK joined the late-2001 invasion of Afghanistan, 280 British military personnel have been killed in the country and subsequently listed by

Brown, or his predecessor-in- office, Tony Blair, in the Commons, alongside the hundreds more who lost their lives in uniform in Iraq.

Months ago, British military losses in Afghanistan threatened to derail Labour’s election bid, as Brown struggled to cope with charge after charge from retired generals and others still in uniform that the British army had been left dangerously short of helicopters in the early days of the conflict because of cutbacks made by him when he was chancellor of the exchequer.

Brown, facing his final prime minister’s questions in the lifetime of this parliament, and perhaps ever, depending on the verdict of the British public on May 6th, had deliberately included the political theatre of PMQs as part of Labour’s first week of election campaigning. He needed to go out on a high but it cannot truly be said that he succeeded.

Conservative leader David Cameron had the air of a politician who was crafting lines to be used later in TV and internet advertising campaigns, returning the focus repeatedly to the helicopter shortages – a subject where the prime minister struggles to be anything less than evasive, because he did cut the military’s budget in the crucial years.

The prime minister, said Cameron, had his “last chance” to show accountability for the decisions he has made, but Brown passed the buck to military commanders. They had been asked every time if they had enough of the right equipment for operations, and they said they did.

“It is right that I take full responsibility, but I take the advice of commanding officers,” replied Brown.

Cameron sneered, pointing out that Brown is the only prime minister ever called before a public inquiry – in his case, the Chilcot Iraq inquiry – who had to admit subsequently that he gave inaccurate information about military spending.

“That answer sums up this premiership. Why can’t he just admit something that everybody knows to be true?” the Tory leader demanded.

Brown went on, changing the past tense to the present, insisting that the military had enough of everything they needed now, pointing out that the Afghan operation is costing the British taxpayer £5 billion this year alone. However, he is vulnerable to charges about the past, and he knows it. A few months ago that looked politically dangerous. Today, it seems not to feature in voters’ calculations as they make up their minds.

Every Wednesday in the House of Commons, prime minister’s questions are a gladiatorial political contest, where careers can be made with a beautifully delivered gibe, or broken by a fluffed line and where every comma and sentence is analysed by the politicians to the left and right and the press up above.

It is the ultimate insiders’ spectator sport, which matters intensely to politicians and less so, if at all, to those living outside of the Westminster “village”. And it is not always a good guide.

For the hapless Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, PMQs became a weekly penance, skewered as he was mercilessly by Tony Blair. His predecessor, William Hague, conversely, did well inside the House, but was destroyed outside.

Brown has had a mixed record in his time at the helm, preferring the “clunking fist” of statistics to his predecessor’s crafted prose.

Given the seriousness of the times, the practice has served him well on occasions against the Conservative leader, pitching his dour and earnest seriousness against the younger man’s inexperience. But not always.

Yesterday was one of those “not always” days. The Conservative benches were in rowdy mood, clearly confident about the weeks ahead. A few cried out “bye, bye” in juvenile taunts across the floor. Labour backbenchers, with few exceptions, seemed in more sombre mood; rarely seeking to drown out the opposing side with raucous cheers and abuse as is required under the rules of the game.

Brown did not help them. His best line, “To think that he was the future once” was not his own, but, rather, a reworking of a Cameron quote delivered in his first PMQs against Blair in December 2005 when he told the latter, “I want to talk about the future. He was the future once.”

With that single line Cameron did much to soothe the nerves of Conservatives that they had chosen the right leader finally. The weeks ahead will tell.