Eye witnesses in the press gallery had PMQs as a Miliband walkover, but television – reality, that is – told a different story.
You can tile up a number of screens on top of BBC Parliament and watch – say – lesbian spanking porn while listening to Ed’s voice and you can try turning over the words “Prime Minister Miliband”.
And it’s true – he has an engaging private voice. It’s got texture. It’s got a second, lower register. He can easily, gently, get down there. “Down there where the money is,” as Bing Crosby, the crooning seducer, had it.
And when he uses this voice, as he did, to talk about the Paris massacres… To put it as strongly as possible: I don’t deny it’s not impossible to think of Miliband as a prime minister.
But before the lesbian delinquents had been properly corrected, Ed had finished with Islamic maniacs threatening our civilization and started in on the TV debates.
Face flying, finger working, eyes darting to and from his script, mouth ballooning, and the voice wailing up into the altosphere.
Prime Minister Miliband. Suddenly it’s like Unsinkable Ship. Something that’s impossible, and if it does happen, sinks.
If the NHS is Labour’s religion, the immanent, unknowable reality that nurtures its people, Ed Miliband is its holy warrior. It’s an old-fashioned, unreformed religion based on medieval inspiration and badly in need of a reformation but it still has a mystical grip on the people.
It is a bit of a sect, and its jumping jihadist is described – even by his supporters – as something of a cult, but the current crusade is to honour the teachings of the donkey-jacketed prophet Michael Foot.
Like any jihadist, he doesn’t quite match up to the inspiration.
As an ideological warrior, he’s driven by power rather than holiness. He’ll do any damage to his beliefs, as long as it damages his enemies more. He talks in such sectarian language there’s no conversation possible. He’s totalitarian in his edicts. He surrounds himself with a palace guard or he’d be torn to pieces by the wider following. And he lacks a beard. No beard! With teeth like his you need a beard.
The transcendental nitwit stood up at the despatch box and accused the Tories of manifold wickedness. They must have been blind. Are they still blind? Maybe that can be arranged. Branded and blinded for their filthy blasphemies against the holy of holies.
Our prime minister introduced this thrilling concept into PMQs just now, an entirely new sub-genre of the mainstream practice. What an exquisitely-tuned sensibility Eton produces in these matters.
He had been mocking Ed Balls, quoting his plan to be “tough on the deficit and tough on the causes of the deficit.” And as he was one of the main causes of the deficit, this was an example of “maso-sadism.”
Exactly how it differs from sado-masochism remained a tantalising mystery.
Labour erupted into a furious communion with itself and the House. What did he mean? What was this fascinating variation that only the elite have access to?
The Speaker attempted to calm his constituency. “We all know what he meant,” he said in a world-weary way. But it was unlikely he did know. Maso-sadism is strictly a Pop, P2, Order of the Garter sort of secret from which the Speaker will always be excluded (hence his loathing).
Perhaps realising he had given away more than he should, Cameron corrected himself. (That’s level one in M-S.) He laughed it off. He meant ordinary masochism. “I always said he could dish it put but he couldn’t take it. But I think he likes to take it as well.”
Good old Brooks Newmark, he hath done the sketch some service.
On a question about the inner workings of the penile system and afflictions of the testicles there he was, lounging behind the questioner in his paisley-coloured dreamland. He’s certainly in touch. He definitely gets it.
Unlike – oh how very unlike – our friend who speaks for the Labour Party on these occasions.
Ed Miliband brought his finger to the fore. Long and odd, as you’d expect in an alien. It’s an open secret, isn’t it? The Labour leader is not of this world. He belongs in the basket of a little boy’s bicycle. We’re all waiting – I mean literally everyone is waiting – for the Miliband fingertip to light up and for him to croak, “Home!” Oh, the relief in his party on that joyful day.
For his weekly turn, Ed let out six fluent streams of static, six bursts of passionate telemetry. It’s a language Geiger counters understand well.
Decoded, it appears he wants us to believe that the NHS in crisis. Which it may very well be. Cameron’s complete answer consists of: 1) Labour wanted to cut its funding. And 2) The country needs to make the money before it can be spent on health.
That is the only answer necessary and one he gives every week. For all his other-worldly intelligence, Miliband hasn’t found a way round or through it.
The wheels of a Parliament grind slow but they grind fine.
Andrew Lansley’s evidence to the Governance committee this week is very damaging to John Bercow’s prospects.
The committee was set up to look at the Speaker’s (disastrous) handling of the appointment of chief Clerk of the Commons. As Guido pointed out early in the year, it was clear that Bercow was operating a policy of Diminish and Rule to increase his suffocating grip on Commons life.
Abolishing, or massively diminishing, the office of Clerk would give him unrestrained access to the powers and budgets of department heads.
Andrew Lansley confirmed in evidence that Bercow ran the recruitment as if it was his own personal process (in our view, to appoint the one person he had in mind from the outset).
Up he stood with one prepared earlier by nitwits unknown.
Faced with prolonged Tory cheers, the ones he gets every week, he said, “Let’s see if they’re still cheering on Friday!” (Laughter)
The Rochester by-election is set to give the Tories a rollicking. That much we have known for a fortnight, all through Ed’s leadership crisis.
But it’s usually a mistake to chaff the prime minister. “I make one prediction,” he said in his easy, Eton house-room way, “the people behind me will still be cheering HIM on Friday.”
True.
The news on Friday morning may be shocking enough to revive Labour panic. What happens if they poll 15 per cent? Tory failure has been priced in – has Labour melt-away? How will the 100-odd Labour MPs feel when their vulnerability is dramatised for them? When they look ahead to the loss of their precious seat?
Because it’s all about Ed. Presidential Ed. The teeth of the campaign. The big brain behind it. The single greatest weakness of the party is given the greatest prominence. Who thought that was a good idea?
Ed!
It isn’t a confection of the right wing press: voters look at Ed and shudder.
