Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQT) this week kicked off with the Prime Minister offering condolences to families of soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan this week. A quick question from Labour backbencher Jamie Reed about banker’s bonuses enabled the Prime Minister to reel off measures taken by his government to moderate the behaviour of banks and reimburse the tax payer.

The real business began though as David Cameron asked a string of probing questions relating to the failings of the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital and why a public enquiry will not be held. Gordon Brown was typically robust in his reply, stating that the Health Secretary will report on the matter following PMQs, acknowledging that the failings were unacceptable, gave reassurances that those responsible will be not be let off lightly and went over what has already been achieved in terms of transparency and good health practice. This initial exchange perhaps looked better for Mr Brown than it did for Mr Cameron, because the tough minded nature of his response demonstrated not only that his understood the issue, but that action was being taken to ensure that there would be no repeat. However, Mr Cameron seemed only to use the issue of Mid-Staffordshire Hospital to move the debate on to a strong suit of his, transparency in government. As a party in opposition for thirteen years, the Conservative’s have the luxury of being able to look in on government and criticise practice. The subsequent question related to the story that Mr Brown had instructed his aides to brief against his Chancellor, Alastair Darling. In two swift sentences, Mr Brown both denied the story and expertly shifted the debate towards the economy with the slick, “This is the nearest he has ever got to talking about the economy in the last few months”. Worryingly perhaps for Mr Brown this brought laughter from both sides of the House, demonstrating that Conservative MPs were incredulous at the thought that Mr. Brown still believes he is winning the economy debate. This very same point was then picked up on by Mr Cameron who listed how Labour has “brought the country to its knees” before reverting back to asking why “The Prime Minister and the Chancellor [are] at war with each other?”. Doing all they could to portray a friendly relationship between the two, Brown and Darling got so close Mr Cameron accused them nearly kissing, perhaps the soundbite of the day. The Prime Minister’s response was once again robust, flatly denying that he had instructed briefings against the Chancellor and going back once more to his line of economic attack. Amid mass barracking, derision and heckling the Speaker, John Bercow weighed into the debate with a snide remark about the allegations that members of staff in No. 10 had called a bullying helpline. The neutrality of the Speaker failed in this respect and he is obviously keen to keep in Mr Cameron’s good books for whatever reason. After one more back and forth about the relationship between No. 10 and the Treasury questions moved away from the Leader of the Opposition to other members. In all the questions asked by Mr Cameron went little deeper than populist appeals to media headlines, but were nevertheless effective in making Mr Brown look like he was on the defensive and avoiding answering straight questions. On the contrary Mr Brown’s tough, robust responses fed the image he is trying to create of a man of sense and reason, who is responsible to run the country as opposed to the politically naїve gunslinger across the dispatch box. The problem Labour will face is that this ‘politically naїve gunslinger’ could well ride into No. 10 on the back of anti-Brownite sentiment without having to express any real opinions.

In all  PMQs this week was won by Mr Cameron. Although it was a close run thing, the soundbites and quick thinking quips by the Leaderof the Opposition made him seem more personable than the sombre Mr Brown.

David Vaiani (18/02/10)

Even once the dust had finally settled across Westminster North, it was not immediately clear what all the fuss had been about in the first place. Most casual observers will have viewed the resignation of Joanne Cash, the Tory PPC in Westminster North, with a sense of utter bewilderment. After all, there did not appear to be any great disagreement over policy. Nor was there any discernible question of principle at stake. As usual, the whole affair seemed to boil down to little more than petty personality battles. I won’t go into any of the turgid detail, as I would not wish to bore you unnecessarily. And yet, the true picture of what happened in this marginal seat is a more complicated one, and it tells us much about the current state of the Tory Party.

Although the ‘Joanne Cash Affair’ may appear, on the face of it, to be a trivial non-event, the truth of the matter is that it goes to the very heart of the biggest division within the party: between the party’s rank-and-file activists and the new wave of ‘Cameroons’, loyal to the party leader. In order to understand this division, it is important to grasp that it is about more then mere personality battles. Broadly speaking, the activists are traditional Tories who support Thatcherite economics, grammar schools, and a tough stance on law & order. They tend to be strongly Eurosceptic and they have little time for political correctness when it comes to immigration. The Cameroons, meanwhile, believe in ‘sharing the proceeds of growth’ (at least they did before the collapse of Lehman Brothers) and prefer to ‘hug a hoodie’, rather than locking him up. They also choose to ignore the issue of grammar schools and, whilst they tend to be Eurosceptic, they are not obsessively so. In contrast to the activists, they think that the NHS should be ring-fenced from any form of spending cuts and they want to increase the size of the international development budget. In short, there are real divisions over both style and substance between these two mutually hostile camps. 

Beyond policy differences, the activists are furious with Joanne Cash because she represents everything they loathe about the party’s new method of selecting parliamentary candidates: she is a young(ish), glamorous, metropolitan woman, with close links to the leadership. The stories about her Etonian husband and the fact that the couple are said to ‘dine frequently with Dave and Sam’ have only served to raise the hackles of the activists even further. But perhaps most importantly of all, the activists feel that the likes of Joanne Cash are Johnny-come-latelies who are not really committed to the Tory cause. They are angry that some of these candidates have simply waltzed into safe seats despite never having campaigned for the party in the past. Indeed, Joanne Cash herself became the candidate in Westminster North only months after she had been paraded around her future association colleagues for the first time at the 2006 Tory Party Conference. As some mischievous characters have been quick to point out in regards to the ‘I’ve never voted Tory before’ poster campaign: nor have some of the current Tory PPCs. This may not be entirely fair, but it has struck a chord with a number of activists who feel that their efforts have been ignored, in favour of a group of people who just happen to ‘look the part’. It started with the much-derided A-List and it continued with the possible introduction of All-women shortlists. Only today, David Cameron defended the aggressive promotion of women on the grounds that meritocracy does not work. ‘If you just say, this is a meritocratic party, anyone can join, anyone can stand – it doesn’t work; I have a lot of sympathy with the meritocratic view, but the rate of change was just too slow’, the Tory leader said. This will have infuriated the more traditionally-minded activists within the party. 

In the end, the ‘Joanne Cash Affair’ will probably not derail David Cameron’s quest to become Prime Minister at the General Election in May. However, the divisions that have been highlighted by this local spat will not die quietly.