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By Sam Macrory - 2nd March 2011
Directionless, incoherent, and occasionally baffling. It's a catching political style.
First Ed Miliband's efforts at defining the squeezed middle, then David Cameron's somersaulting foreign policy, and now a confusingly staccato half hour at this afternoon's prime minister's questions.
Libya, military redundancies, children's centre closures, and the non-compliant – according to the prime minister - Nottingham council, PMQs lurched well beyond pillars and posts yet always ended in a familiar place.
It doesn't matter if you go to North Africa or Bromley council, the answer remains the same: Labour messed up the public finances. And when everything can be blamed on the last government's ropey book-keeping, there's very little Ed Miliband can do.
A favoured Mili-tactic, deployed today, is to split his six questions into two halves.
The first batch tends to be a hushed attempt at statesmanlike co-operation, with the second trio providing the nasty stuff.
The strange lull in between is filled by instantly forgotten questions from eager backbenchers, very much the warm-ups before the main act returns from the green room.
First, the serious stuff. Libya and no-fly zones.
"Can he clarify where that proposal now stands?" asked the Labour leader after Cameron's proposal struggled to make it off the ground.
The prime minister talked about everything else but, before quickly adding that the issue was still being discussed.
If not stuck in a corner, he was certainly tip-toeing backwards in that direction, but Miliband clumsily lost the moment by switching his focus to RAF redundancies.
The prime minister was freed to use his favourite argument-crushing answer, namely the "enormous black hole in our nation's finances."
That did for Miliband the unconvincing statesman; before long it was back to Miliband the slightly convincing political warrior.
Could the PM explain why "Bromley council is shutting 13 of its 16 children's centres?" he asked.
Of course he could – there was a mess in the nation's finances. And everyone was helping to sort it out – except the dastardly "Labour-run Nottingham" council.
For players of PMQs bingo, for every answer on Labour's economic legacy you'll hear Miliband triumphantly declare: "You know he is losing the argument when he starts asking me the questions, Mr Speaker".
And he did, but it has rather lost its zing. Labour MPs now murmur rather than cheer in the way they used to, despite their leader's nodding prompts.
New one-liners please - and one duly followed. "We are getting used to the prime minister's question time u-turn."
That sounds unpleasant – and not all that catchy.
"We have seen it on school sport, housing benefit and, most recently, on forests. He has the capacity to ditch a policy and dump a colleague in it, so when he returns to the Dispatch Box, why does he not dump this policy too and reinstate the Sure Start ring fence?" A lot of words for a rather small question. Silence on the Labour benches.
"In a minute, he is going to give me a lesson on family loyalty," snapped Cameron in response to far bigger cheers, though he appeared to have been fed that line by a whispering George Osborne.
Miliband blushed. The rather embarrassing crime of public fratricide is hard to shift from his CV, but when he reviews the tapes of this session he'll see that the PM was wobbling.
It's easy to tell – Cameron gets personal. "When the opposition considers the right honourable gentleman's performance it could be time for a bit of 'Brother, where art thou?'" Cameron later added.
Not so funny second time around, and the interminable pause before the punchline made it all the less impressive.
Why the pause? An off-putting Ed Balls was waving furiously. Miliband was laughing. The PM joined in. PMQs really had lost its thread when mortal enemies share a joke.
Attention turned to a far spikier feud being played out further down the row.
Gordon Birtwistle, the new old Lib Dem MP, has a set of facial features which seem to be permanently set at scowl.
And when the veteran duo of Ronnie Campbell and Denis Skinner refused to stop heckling him, Birtwistle didnt just look cross – he looks furious.
Mid-way through his noisily interrupted question on Libya, Birtwistle stopped, turned to face Labour's very own Warldof and Statler, and stared. Go on then, the stare said, if you dare.
People don't do that to Skinner, even if he is well past his bullying prime.
We faced an OAP brawl, but luckily the prime minister stepped in, advising Birtwistle to ignore the voices on the Labour benches because "they are just furious at the fact that he liberated a long-held Labour seat".
Birtwistle punched the air in delight and, for a second, a smile briefly broke through. Skinner fumed, but like the weekly foiled cartoon villain, he'll be back next time.
He always is. His is one political style that is entirely predictable and easy to follow.
Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.
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