PMQs shameful display

The gladiatorial spectacle can be dazzling: two talented warriors outfoxing each other in the most intense of battles.
Or it can be brutal, as sickening thuds rain down in a bloody encounter, leaving the spectator questioning the battle’s morality.
Wednesday’s PMQs was the latter.
The despair over the failings of Haringey Council to protect Baby P from the most terrible of crimes had not penetrated the bubble of the Westminster Coliseum.
Those in the arena had hoped for an elegant fight over the economy.
The opponents had chosen their weapons.
Brown had the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who had tentatively supported the government’s proposals to fund tax cuts through borrowing. Cameron’s weapon was the 1.82m unemployed – the same level as when Labour came to power in 1997.
Cameron stepped up, “Only this Prime Minister could be quite so smug on the day that 140,000 people have lost their jobs.” The crowd licked their lips, those in the press gallery salivating on the soon-to-be dirt-strewn floor below.
However, before battle could commence, Cameron acknowledged the traditions of the undefeated Tony Blair, who would introduce each clash with a “the whole house will wish to join in paying their respects” ritual – which Brown had failed to address at the start.
Respects paid, the assembled masses waited eagerly for the economic onslaught.
It never came.
Cameron, unimpressed by Brown, pushed the point.
He was hit by a deafening wall of sycophantic cooing. “Shame! Shame!” said the Labour MPs. Yes, it was a shame.
Clouds were gathering overhead and this skirmish was turning nasty.
The officials attempted to keep control. Maybe the event could be saved. Why, even the veteran warrior, Lord Mandelson, had come to watch from on high in the gallery.
“It will not do for us to shout across the Chamber after this terrible news has come to us,” cautioned Mr Speaker. Indeed it would not. But the fury had set in from both sides. “No one will defy the Chair,” thundered Mr Speaker. Again, to no avail.
An introductory footnote had become the main event.
“I regret making a party political issue of this matter,” said Brown. A party political issue it had indeed become, but one of Brown’s own making and, whether he believed his own words or not, he would certainly regret it by end of the encounter.
In an act of showmanship and anger, Cameron brushed aside his notes, knocking them to the floor. The possibility of rescuing the occasion was lost – they contained his economy questions.
Brown should have been victorious. Economy battles are, after all, his specialty. Instead he found himself stuttering and stumbling with nothing more than his “executive summary” to fall back on – a phrase he uttered five times, whilst the jeering at Cameron from behind him echoed like a chorus of hyenas baiting their prey.
No wonder the public are disillusioned with politics if the current and potentially future Prime Ministers act like schoolboy brats.
Shouting for the sake of political points scoring over the death of a 17 month-old child by MPs was sickening. Yet, one tranquil voice soared above the rest.
Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green and former councillor for Haringey where the Baby P and Victoria Climbié tragedies took place, asked calmly for an independent public enquiry. It seems she might just get her way.
If all politicians behaved like her maybe we could actually get things done.