By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
I guess if you failed to get on X factor, Britain’s Got Talent and that naked TV game show with Keith Chegwin, you can always e-mail Jeremy Corbyn for your fifteen minutes of fame, and hope he asks your question out.
The lady who was used to present Corbyn’s first question at his maiden PMQs was on Radio 5 live by mid-afternoon the very same day. A moment with Richard Bacon, is never a moment wasted, it says on his website.
I really hope they vet the people who contact the party with potential questions, and, just as last time, the Tories laughed when Corbyn read out their troubles, charming.
Today was “single mum Kelly, who works 40 hours a week and earns bang on the living wage, and will be £1,800 out of pocket with the Tories tax credit changes.” It sounded like a dream come true. Well it actually sounded like a 25-year-old Labour staffer, from behind a laptop in his parent’s house. But I’m sure they do their background checks, the new regime seems pretty organised.
Ok, the u-turn over the support for the Conservative’s austerity plans was a bit unexpected. It seemed to appear to chancellor John McDonnell in a dream over night. Akin to how John Lennon named the Beatles: “A man appeared eating a flaming pie and said with his thick Hull accent, ‘from this day on you…must be mad if you follow those Tory Bastards, with a massive B’.”
Some Labour MPs hate the idea and the rest just hate the fact they were not told about the policy shift. The ones who hate the whole idea, fear the party will be branded “deficit deniers,” which, no matter how many times I hear it, conjures up images of the Holocaust, and I immediately associate these people with unimaginable evil. It takes a few seconds to re-wire my simpleton mind, to realise the phrase was dreamt up for that very reason.
Anyway, Cameron and Corbyn are still pretending to be civil with each other, which is quite amusing as the PM basically lied about Corbyn’s views on Bin Laden’s capture, during his Tory conference speech. David also seems eager to tell anyone who will listen, that the lifelong pacifist is a threat to our national security, as his hand manically waves over the nuclear launch button.
Corbyn did have a little pop at Cameron, twice, during today’s PMQs which makes you think there might be an aggressive Corbyn bubbling away underneath.
During PMQs it is almost as if the right expect Jeremy to scream “die capitalist swine” after every question and the left expect him to renounce capitalism between each breath.
What actually happened is they both ended arguing about whether inequality has risen or not, using their own statistics, to prove themselves right. Then the Labour leader didn’t praise the improving employment figures. So it was business as usual, just a bit more boring – like going to the football without having a few pints first.
That “stat off” aside, they were fairly convivial with each other, so Cameron now unleashes his anger on poor old Angus Roberston, SNP, and told him to “get off his high horse,” and thanks to him, Gaddafi would still be running an almost functioning country.
There were two minor jibes about Cameron’s piglet fetish, but they both made a pig’s ear (as I just have) of it. He even offered his free copy to Kevin Brennan, Lab, who asked about the revelations from the book, so Ashcroft wouldn’t get the royalties.
This was fifteen minutes of fame the PM certainly didn’t need, but I’m still searching for mine. So Jeremy, I am Joe from Newcastle upon-Tyne and either you ask my question next week or I will bear all on that TV quiz show, and you really don’t want to see my u-turn on that.
Sycophantic question of the day
Tom Pursglove, Con, who has won this before (bet he is over the moon about that) with his confidence that Corby is the best place on earth. Even the PM seemed a bit creeped out by it, and said he couldn’t make another trip up there.
Winner
Angus Robertson, SNP, because I feel sorry for him.
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