Michael Gove - a Miserable man...

It seems that I was watching the Commons at the wrong time yesterday. Far from PMQs, the real excitement came during Michael Gove's apology to the House over the appaling errors in the list of school building cuts his Department had released on Monday (which really were awful by the way - does the Department of Education have to make such a habit of embarrassing its Ministers?)

The exchanges were bad-tempered to start, but reached a whole new level when Labour MP Tom Watson stood up...

An outburst that raises a number of points:

1. Tom Watson really should know better. Yelling and screaming in the House isn't the way to make your point, no matter how angry you are.

2. It seems a tad harsh to blame Gove for 'the hopes of hundreds of thousands' of schoolchildren, particularly given the fact that none of the schools involved have officially been promised the money at any time, pre or post-election.

3. Being as the Speaker only asked Watson to withdraw the term 'pipsqueak', does that mean the rest of his comment stands on the record? Gove might display a certain dry wit, but he's never really struck me as a miserable man...

PMQs - Harman vs. Hague

Gordon Brown wasn’t at PMQs today, so Harriet Harman filled in. Rather than answering questions on his Government’s policies in the House, the Prime Minister was away ‘welcoming’ the President of South Africa to our shores. The point was made on the Daily Politics that he could have quite easily pushed this meeting back, and it is a fair one. Brown has missed twice as many PMQs in his two and a half years as Tony Blair missed in his ten years, and it simply isn’t good enough.

It was an extremely noisy session, with insults flying back and forth – mainly about Lord Ashcroft. Harman worked hard at the insults but often lacked the substance to back them up, frequently looking out of her depth on the economic and defence questions Hague threw at her today. In such a rowdy environment mistakes were frequent: Harman referring to Hague as Foreign Secretary was matched by the Tory backbencher forgetting to ask his question, and the Leader of the House not bothering to listen to one from her own back-benches.

As to Lord Ashcroft, Harman got a dig in on the subject during most of her answers but anything she offered up to Hague on the subject was thrown back in her face with relish, particularly with a reference to Harman’s own husband’s selection as PPC for Ladywood – “she doesn't’ want to recognize marriage in the tax system, but she sure does in the political system”. Vintage.

In all I can’t help feeling that this Ashcroft saga is becoming a bit of a Westminster circle-jerk. After PMQs, Tessa Jowell and Nick Robinson were on the Daily Politics talking about its ‘interstices’. Latin as a language to connect with the electorate?! Most of the people I speak to don’t really seem to care one way or the other about Ashcroft, Paul, Bollinger…or politics in general come to that matter. Maybe we could fire their interest by talking to them about policy instead? Just an idea guys…

On another note, I was impressed with the Speaker today. Bercow tried to keep order during the Leaders’ questions with little success, but lost it properly when the noise continued into backbench questions – well done!