Cameron’s cockiness needs to be checked
Quentin Letts watches as PMQs gets personal
WE can blame Labour frontbencher Angela Eagle. It was she, reckless fool, who twice heckled David Cameron at PMQs.
‘Ask your moom!’ she yelled, cupping her mouth with her left hand. Seconds later: ‘ Ask your moovver!’
Jeremy Corbyn was at the time arguing against the Government’s ‘austerity cuts’ (which Mr Cameron’s mother, Mary, questioned when she signed a recent petition in Oxfordshire). Old Corbyn was doing reasonably well, too. He had the PM in some difficulty on his treatment of junior doctors.
Hearing Miss Eagle’s heckle, Mr Cameron saw his chance. ‘Ask my mother?’ he said, shocked. A melodramatic pause. Handbrake stop. Total silence.
It was as though someone had mentioned the name of an ancient Norse goddess of war. An unmentionable had been uttered.
In the corner of my eye I may have seen a Hansard reporter cross herself and civil servants in a side box drop to the crash position, as advised on aeroplane safety leaflets.
In Valhalla, warriors reached for helmets and muttered ‘uh- oh, Eagledottir’s going to regret that’. Dark organ chords shook the air. Skittering mice dived down drains and ravens scattered in the skies, fleeing the Approaching Presence. The Cameron mater!
‘I know what my mother would say,’ said Mr Cameron. ‘ She would look across the despatch box and say “put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem”.’
Thirty seconds of loud laughter ensued, not all from the Tory benches. Speaker Bercow’s chest heaved. Labour MPs bit hard on their cheeks.
It was one of those ‘ harsh but true’ moments – ridiculously shallow, of course, for what does it matter if Mr Corbyn is untidy? Yet it was deadly.
The entrance of Mary Cameron as a character in our national debates may conjure images of a ginny-voiced memsahib, the sort who smokes cigarillos, shoots squirrels with a blunderbuss and wears a Moshe Dayan eyepatch.
Make that woman a Cabinet minister, you may think. Perhaps she could be asked to run the Army or the Metropolitan Police or the BBC. She’d put the wind up those scruffs at Newsnight.
I did encounter her once, in a crowded room on the day her son
became Tory leader. She was wearing one of those bullet-proof hairdos still found in market towns in the outer shires.
I asked her for a comment. She fixed me with the disdainful look a tigress might cast at a dung beetle. It made plain that she did not converse with journalists. I should kindly close the tradesman’s door
YES, Mr Cameron’s insult to Mr Corbyn yesterday was cheap yet it had the merit of being unexpected and, in the moment, comical. Mr Corbyn, to his credit, responded with an extempore remark about his own mum.
The Labour leader said: ‘My late mother would have said “stand up for the principle of a health service free at the point of use”.’
He went up in my estimation not just for saying that but for the tone of emotional defiance with which it was said. His words actually brought a little prickle to my eyes.
Mr Cameron was delighted – too much so – by his joke. Later in the session he issued another savage barb, this time about Labour spin doctor Damian McBride. The Prime Minister was so pleased by that wisecrack that he knocked the glasses off his nose in his selfcongratulatory gestures.
This cockiness is not attractive and it needs to be checked, as does the awful braying of the Tory backbenchers who give ludicrous ‘hoorays’ at the mention of any Cameroon MP who is called to speak.
As we saw on Monday with his high-handed treatement of Boris Johnson, Mr Cameron is in danger of looking too arrogant by half. When a Prime Minister becomes this sure of himself, it inevitably leads to mistakes.
The Mother would surely like over-weening pride little more than she would approve of poor old Corbyn’s sports jacket.