Hattie's Flop In Carry On Up The Commons

Brown back-stabber Harman's blundering has blown any chance of her leadership out of the water after telling a barefaced lie to parliament and getting a pummelling from both Thatcher boy Hague and Cable the economic oracle. 

With the illustrious leaders out of sight of the commons cameras it was the battle of the deputies over the dispatch box. But deputy party leader, Harriet Harman, had the most to lose. 

The Labour leadership contest and general election campaign are well underway, all rolled into one big melting pot, with Hattie the favourite to usurp the throne from beleaguered Brown. 

But holding your own in the cut and thrust of the battle of commons sound-bites is one thing. Telling porkies is quite another. 

That came in a commons question about Sir Fred the Shred's knighthood which Harman told the commons was for his 'charity work'. 

Now any fool knows what most of Brown's banking buddies were given their Ks and Ps for. And Harman is no fool. This was a disgraceful attempt at New Labour spin which is forever tarring the government. 

Later Harman issued a statement saying she made a mistake. The BBC  tried to explain away the whole thing as a bit of a 'gaffe':

"It was, in fact, the case that he received his honour for services to banking". 

 

Just an honest mistake gov. Not a sordid way to worm her way  out of answering an awkward question. Even accepting the gaff line,  in one fell swoop, the so-called wonder woman turned into blunder woman. 

Elsewhere Hague showed his mettle as the accomplished afternoon dinner speaker and useless shadow foreign secretary he is, as he jibed about how he was now "a modest deputy leader, but a loyal one". 

How the Tories cheered at that one. And how young pretender Miliband looked on, barley able to disguise his relish.

Cable had a chance to speak without the hand of Clegg, up his back. He had a good line: "Will there be a Harriet’s Law about clawing back pensions?" Nice one Vince, if a tad old hat. Stick to the day job teaching us economics.

It is Brown's stubborn refusal to accept some, any responsibility for the global economic mess that should have been a gift to Hague and Cable, thanks to chancellor Darling, willing  to try on the hair-shirt over who is to blame for the economic disaster.

The Downing Street narrative on that one is changing as the battle for the Labour leadership and the next general election get well and truly underway. But Brown seems to be stubbornly digging in his heels and digging his own grave. That one will not go away, no matter how hard McCavity Brown tries to hide.

Writing in The Times, Alice Miles today described Brown as: "Humiliated, hopeless, paralysed. Time to go". 

With Harman now a dead-duck and the despised Mandelson pulling the strings behind Brown's back, most members of the parliamentary Labour Party and the cabinet just want to be put out of their misery.

The sooner Cameron gets back the better. Commons politics is really quite boring without him. 

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Cameron, A Man With A PM Plan

Cameron is a man with a plan, striding forward, looking backwards. The Tory conference threw up a rare beast - a politician who spoke with conviction, spitting out his disgust at the government which has wrecked the economy and people's lives. He's hungry to govern. But did he convince voters he's the Chosen One?

This was a very different Cameron from a year ago, a Cameron who then persuaded the Tories to ditch their old ways and put on a caring face. Here he was not afraid to praise the old guard of Howard, Duncan-Smith and of course Thatcher.

Cameron didn't feel the need to have the young turks behind him - Osborne and Hague were all he needed. And here was someone who acidly pointed out that even when Brown gets it right - he also gets it wrong. If nothing else, that was a clap-line most of the country would agree with.

And someone who, at last, managed to cast off the heir-to-Blair image that has haunted him. He could barley hide his disgust for Blair as a man of all style and no substance. 

It was time to reassure voters about the slogan 'Plan for Change'. He had a plan, not a Blair "miracle cure", to mend the broken society and finally get to grips with the economic mess of years of New Labour. His was a government-in-waiting.

The Party faithful of course lapped it up. But in the streets, in the pubs, in the shops and around the water-cooler, they are the people who he has to convince. He thinks he's ready to govern but do they?

One striking fact came across from today's conference speech. Voters may not agree with all the broad brush stroke policies and a manifesto is some while off - but you could trust him to deliver - with passion. 

In the pub, after watching the conference speech, a lefty bloke remarked: Well, I'd vote for him. Anything is better than the smug arrogant bastards we have at the moment. And that's from someone who would spit on Thatcher's grave. And that probably sums up the mood of the country.

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Punch Beats Up Judy at PMQs

Pitching a fumbling fool against one of the country's finest public speakers, could only end in disaster. The results were plain to see in the commons during today's prime minister's questions, which had neither a prime minister or any answers to questions. 

Instead it showed up the complacency of New Labour which could only answer questions by harking back to a previous Conservative record over a decade ago! Has anyone told them that was then, this is now?

It was knockabout 'Punch and Judy' politics, as New Labour wannabe prime minister, Harriet Harman, standing in for Brown, could only read from a prepared script, while William Hague, standing in for Cameron, delivered a master-class in political oratory.

Harman tried it on with a childish 'Headcases' jibe on Hague's boyish 18 pint-a-day(sic) beer-drinking habit. 

Easy. "At least I didn't waste any", retorted Hague.

Even the LibDems, Vincent Cable, managed to get in a neat dig about Brown wanting to be "Britain's weight-watcher in chief".

But that was just for starters. Hague followed up with a killer blow to Harman and Brown. 

"Isn't there something supremely ironic about being lectured about food waste by a prime minister who is passed his own sell-by date?" he asked.

"Isn't it yet another example of treating people like fools, of preaching prudence but practising profligacy, and waste - isn't this why the whole country is sick of the prime minister?"

Hague was brutal. "If she wants to be prime minister she should start acting like one," he said.

And from that performance, she certainly failed the test.

BBC 'News' On-line predictably towed the Harman line with a headline that Brown has "true grit". But wasn't John Wayne's real name Marion?

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