PMQs Verdict: The importance of defending your record

Today there was a PMQs. Remember them? It’s when Ed Miliband asks David Cameron questions and the Prime Minister does his best not to answer. Don’t worry if you’ve forgotten about it – after all Cameron has ensured that there aren’t many of them at the moment. I can’t imagine why.

In the absence of a weekly tussle with the Labour’s real opponents – the government – the party has of late shown its remarkable, self-destructive determination to turn in on itself and have a good old row about how we should be winning by more than we currently are.

Today should serve as a reminder of why that’s a waste of time, and a distraction from those who would traduce our record in Parliament.

Ed Miliband today lambasted the Prime Minister for the government’s failings on A&E waiting times. A response from the Prime Minister was required. An apology? An acceptance that his party still have some way to go on the NHS? No – of course not. Instead he threw some slurs at Labour over the appalling failures at Stafford Hospital.

A few months ago the PM received deserved plaudits for his statesmanlike and mature response to the report into the shameful happenings at that hospital. He noted that despite the huge problems that were uncovered, the report absolved the last government of blame, and was clear to note that no blame was apportioned to then Helth Secretary (and now Shadow Health Secretary) Andy Burnham.

Sadly, today he forgot about that measured and responsible statement – and tried to use the deaths of patients as a means of attacking, time and time again, Labour’s record on the NHS.

It was an important moment for Miliband. He has been keen of late to disown sections of Labour’s record in government, but on the NHS he is unwilling to cede ground to the Tories.

If Labour wins in 2015, and governs for five years, then the party will have been in government for 18 out of 23 years. The Tories meanwhile will have gone a quarter of a century without a commons majority. The fight in 2015 is for the mantle of natural party of government. To achieve that, you have to embrace your party’s past at least as often as you repudiate it.

Today, Ed Miliband did that. Labour will cede no ground to Cameron on the NHS – especially not as his party attempt to privatise much of it.

To casual observers this might have just looked like another unsavoury Parliamentary ding dong. But it was far more important than that. It was the point at which Miliband drew a line in the sand – and defended Labour’s string record on the NHS from Cameron’s disgraceful attacks.

Fair play to him, for that.