PMQs verdict: The danger of talking about your own policies

Ed Miliband may be buzzing at the moment, boasting yesterday of his surplus of “intellectual self-confidence” over Cameron. This could well be in part due to his new flagship policy on rents, which has pleased party members, not to mention right wing journalists.

So there was no way he was going to let today’s PMQs go by without mentioning it – and his first one was pretty good, forcing the Prime Minister to agree to longer-term tenancies.

But using three questions on your own policy may be pushing into dangerous hubris territory.

The second question didn’t add much to the first, both hingeing on the contradictory nature of Tory Chairman Grant Shapps view of the “Venezuelan-style rent controls” and Eric Pickles suggesting the policy at Conservative Conference last year. While this is a decent attack, employed here last week, it does ignore the difference between the rent-tied-to-inflation part of the policy and the length-of-tenancy part.

Duly, Cameron did not ignore this difference, allowing him to at once appear supportive of a popular policy and attack it. What he did ignore was that Miliband’s proposal is not an example of classic “rent controls” (Labour have been at pains not to call it that), so that he could read out quotes from Labour MPs slamming… yep, you guessed it – rent controls. That’s something Labour comms team are going to need to get a handle on soon. If you want to see what damage can be caused by letting your opposition set a policy’s name, look no further than the Bedroom Tax. Forget about the actual substance for a moment; the sell is crucial.

Meanwhile, we saw what Cameron’s own housing policy response will be:

“What we want to do is build more houses so that we can have a better rental sector with more affordable rents.”

So do we all, Dave. If only your desire to see houses built could sort out that over-budget and behind-schedule housing policy.

Miliband’s other three questions, after a break, were focussed on the Pfizer/AstraZeneca takeover bid, which suffered largely from being an incredibly dry five minutes of Parliament. Important? Of course, which is why both leaders attempted to portray the other as “playing politics” on the issue, a tactic long recognised as a staple of the playing politics canon, and will forever lead down Cameron’s well-worn path of attacks.

Unfortunately, this means we not in a position to learn much from the exchange. Will the Government use the public fitness text here? He wouldn’t say, so we’ll take that as a no. But did Labour sell the gold? Is that relevant? Every week, apparently.