PMQs verdict: Dave wields his shoehorn – but why did Ed accept the premise of his attacks?

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Only two days ago I was sitting in a field in Glastonbury. To say that the last 48 hours have been a long time in the Labour Party would be an epic understatement. Anyone waiting with baited breath for an example of Athenian debating in the mother of all Parliaments today is, frankly, delusional. this was just as bloody and ugly as expected.

Ed Miliband opened on Egypt, before moving on to schools. He didn’t go hard on Gove’s plans to run schools for profit but on school building and class sizes. It was a legitimate question, but it gave Cameron an opportunity to get his patented Len McCluskey shoehorn out.

Every answer from thereon in was rounded off with a reference to Len McCluskey, Unite or a combination of the two. At present, Labour’s internal rows over Falkirk are an internal party/Westminster issue. Cameron spent PMQs doing his level best to ensure that changes.

But Cameron showed real weakness when he tried to use McCluskey in answer to a serious and worrying intervention on food banks by Stephen Timms, an MP respected on both sides of the House. Cameron’s inability to judge when to stop and his smallness in seeking to play politics with an issue as serious as hunger was un-Prime Ministerial. The ugly Flashman who just can’t stop punching.

Unfortunately though, Ed Miliband chose a short-term tactical response to Cameron’s attacks that may well prove to be a long term blunder. In responding to Cameron’s claims about Unite with a thrusting attack on Cameron for donor dinners in Downing Street, tax cuts for his Christmas card list and Andy Coulson, he inadvertently accepted the premise of Cameron’s attacks. By attacking claims of dirty politics with counterclaims of dirty politics – however justifiable – he will have appeared to those watching at home that he accepted Cameron central claim that politics is dirty.

His riposte may have made those of us in the party happy for a fleeting moment, but to what end?

Ed seemed to be saying that yes, Labour’s politics are imperfect, but so are the Tories – instead of making an argument for a politics that matters, he resorted to the heavy artillery.

RIP the “new politics” – we hardly knew you.

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