Armed with today’s impressive jobs figures, David Cameron arrived at today’s PMQs confident of a win – and a win was what he got. Ed Miliband rightly pointed out that real wages are still falling (average earnings rose by just 0.9 per cent with inflation at 2 per cent) but Cameron had prepared a better response than usual. He argued that the headline figures were misleading since they did not take into account the tax cuts introduced by the coalition and that, on this basis, disposable incomes rose last year. It’s worth noting, as the IFS has said, that families with children are an average of £891 worse off this year due to benefit cuts and tax rises (most notably the VAT increase) but Miliband failed to make this point in the chamber.
More problematic for Labour than this line, however, is Cameron’s continuing ability to pin the blame for the crisis on the last government. In a neat put-down, he compared Miliband to an “arsonist who goes around setting fire after fire then complains that the fire brigade aren’t putting the fires out fast enough” and cited the IFS’s statement that it “would be astonishing” if wages hadn’t fallen after “the biggest recession in 100 years”. Having maintained his new restrained style up to this point, Miliband lapsed into traditional PMQs rhetoric when he accused Cameron of doing “his Bullingdon Club routine”, a sign of his frustration at failing to land any blows.
When the economy was shrinking and unemployment was rising, Miliband could reliably hope for a win on this subject. But with the UK growing faster than any other European economy and joblessness falling at its fastest rate since 1997, it has become much harder for him to knock Cameron off his stride. Cameron ended with a succinct account of the improved situation: “Our plan is working, there are 1.3m more people in work, that is 1.3m more people with the security of a regular pay packet, we are securing Britain’s future and it would be put at risk by Labour.”
Miliband had begun the session by challenging Cameron on the UK’s refusal to accept any Syrian refugees. As usual, Cameron responded by pointing to the UK’s status as the second largest international aid donor and argued that it was wrong to “pretend a small quota system can solve the problem of Syrian refugees”. But after three questions, he eventually conceded that he was prepared to look again at “extreme hardship cases”. While Miliband’s new sober style (he praised Cameron’s “reasonable tone”) has not always served him well, it succeeded on this occasion. Speaking with clear but restrained passion as the son of refugees, he wrung an important concession from the PM.
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