By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
It’s a shame Labour doesn’t back the Junior Doctors’ strike (still not quite sure why, answers on a post card, or to Cobyn’s PMQ question hotline) and that the Leader of the Opposition didn’t bother to mention Cameron’s mum is fighting her own son’s public sector cuts.
Corbyn wore an “I love Unions,” badge but didn’t mention the strike action outside our beloved hospitals. It reminded me of the freshers who used to walk around campus wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt blissfully ignoring homeless people, as they lectured a companion about the merits of socialism. I really hope I’m not speaking from experience, it was a long time ago and it was 90p a pint.
Again, during today’s session, we got six questions on housing, especially about “Rosie” and her struggle to move out from her family home. All Cameron did was prefix his standard answer, to any questions he receives, with her name. So: “Rosie wants a growing economy, Rosie wants a cut in taxes, Rosie needs her own flat so she can take legal highs without her parents finding her arguing with a cheese plant”. One of the three he didn’t say…but may well be true.
What the opposition, and even a few Tories, wanted was Corbyn to say: “I have a question from Mrs Mary Cameron from Oxfordshire, who wants to know why he is intent on the destruction of the welfare state, which he forgot also meant closing services in posh places?”
His answer would be: “I would say to mummy, I have managed to find enough money to save the West Oxfordshire Turkish baths, just down by the Little Waitrose.”
Luckily for the PM he has managed to find some extra cash (£300m) with 83 per cent going to Tory-run councils to keep his party happy and Conservative voters oblivious to how public services continue to run efficiently during a time of austerity.
I would feel better if Cameron just said, “we are going to cut essential services in places where people don’t vote Tory, if you ever decide to vote Conservative you can have the heating back on in your kids’ school.”
But as I have already said Corbyn didn’t do any of this, and attacking the PM on building council housing fails every time, as New Labour appear to have only built about 18 local authority properties during their tenure.
It’s not Corbyn’s fault, he was as far away from a cabinet position then as Rosie is to buying her first home now. So if the Tories whack up one high rise on Hanger Lane they can claim “we are the builders,” a phrase Gideon trots out whenever he gets the chance to wear high-vis, outside of a warehouse rave setting, the Chancellor might frequent on a Tuesday night, by the look of him during certain PMQ sessions.
There are doctors refusing to work, a Prime Minister whose own mum hates his polices and another financial crash on the horizon, but for Corbyn everything was Rosie.
Sycophantic question of the day
Nigel Adams, Con, who mentioned Spitfires, and Labour’s potential rejection of the nuclear deterrent. This gave the PM the ability to conjure up images of winning world wars and potential obliteration under comrade Corbyn.
Winner
Cameron.