PMQs Verdict: A taxing ding-dong before a long, hot summer

It’s warm in Westminster today. The kind of day where it feels like the sun is cracking the paving stones and those forced to dress formally (all MPs, in other words) find themselves easily overheated. Throw in that this is the last PMQs before the summer recess, and you have yourself a session that could easily boil over.

The tone was set from the first question. Labour backbencher Emma Lewell Buck took Cameron on over his so called “reshuffle for women” (which we’ve shown is anything but), bluster came back but little in the way of response. Indeed, Labour often random questions from backbenchers seemed unusually disciplined today. Whether it was the bungled sell off of the royal mail or the bungled reshuffle, Labour MPs were by and large reading from the party script – a level of organisation that “our long term economic plan” parroting Tories have managed for months now.

Miliband was more disciplined too. His opener was a gag at the Michael Gove’s expense (or as the EVening Standard labelled him today – the most unpopular politician in Britain), telling the PM that he’d always back him when he did the right thing – so he applauded him for demoting Gove. There were even a few titters of laughter from the Tory benches.

Cameron’s response was robust, defending Gove and his reform, so much so that it begged the question, why was he sacked then? Still there came no answer. Cameron, sensing that he was on weak ground on his own reshuffle pivoted expertly to whack Miliband for not mentioning the economy or the fall in unemployment.

Often Miliband can play into Cameron’s hands by dodging issues that Cameron wishes to discuss. Not today. He pivoted well himself, saying that falling unemployment is good, but that seven million people in work are also in poverty – and the wages are rising slowly for most. To which Cameron, predicatly, had much to lament, but no answers.

It was all going ok for Miliband, and Cameron too for that matter. This was an end of term ding-dong, cleaning out the locker of jokes and attacks before the summer kicks in and the holiday reading comes out.

Until…Cameron wielded a piece of paper, as he so loves to do. He claimed that Harriet Harman had said that middle class voters should pay more in taxes. Miliband and Balls recoiled, yet Harman apeared to defend her remark. It all looked very messy. Confusion reigned. Brows furrowed and arms were folded on the front bench.

The truth, as John Rentoul notes, is that Harman was defending the principle of progressive taxation (that middle income earners should pay more than low income earners). Harriet Harman doesn’t believe in flat taxes, neither, presumably, does the PM. And yet a clever bit of spin, a quote snipped out of context, had left Labour at sixes and sevens.

In the hours after this PMQs, the party will need to spend time tidying up this mess, allaying concerns that will be stoked by the Tories of middle class tax hikes, and working out a coherent and defensible position on taxation as a whole. All because of a single quote.

Lynton Crosby has earned his money today, but it’s also fair to say that Labour should be organised enough to see these landmines in advance. Surely there is someone in Labour HQ scrutinising the party’s own media appearances for anything that could be misused in the wrong hands?

If not, today might be a good day to make such a hire…