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Andrew Grice
The Independent's Political Editor Andrew Grice has been a journalist for 25 years. Formerly Political Editor at The Sunday Times, he claims he started at Westminster when he was 10 but Whitehall sources say he was 25. His column, The Week in Politics, appears in The Independent each Saturday, and he blogs regularly on Today in Politics.
A very lively session of Prime Minister's Questions today. Gordon Brown's performances these days are so confident that he genuinely looks as if he is enjoying it. I'm sure he isn't, but perception is all. Lord Mandelson, his new coach, looked down approvingly on the chamber from the gallery where peers and MPs sit.
Brown doesn't normally do spontaneous but he did today. When millionaire Tory MP Brooks Newmark asked him to name a country with a bigger deficit than the UK, the PM replied without hesitation: "America." Labour MPs brought the House down. (The Tories are already quibbling about whether Brown was right--it's a technical argument -- so we will hear more about that later).
David Cameron was on good form too. He was on a good wicket, after the revelation that Brown considered raising VAT to 18.5 per from 2011. In fact, the Tories suspect the Government thought about increasing it even further. The Tory leader accused Labour of having a secret "VAT bombshell," saying Monday's mini-Budget was not about helping the economic situation but Brown's political situation. He told Brown: "Isn't the real lesson from the Pre-Budget Report this: the country is going bankrupt, he's been found out and New Labour's dead."
Good stuff, but Brown hit back strongly. He said he had considered but rejected the sort of VAT rises that Tory Governments had implemented in the eighties and nineties, and instead decided to cut it (temporarily). Brown called Cameron "the do nothing leader of a do nothing party." Ouch. That could stick. Great game. Final score: Brown 3, Cameron 3.
Brown doesn't normally do spontaneous but he did today. When millionaire Tory MP Brooks Newmark asked him to name a country with a bigger deficit than the UK, the PM replied without hesitation: "America." Labour MPs brought the House down. (The Tories are already quibbling about whether Brown was right--it's a technical argument -- so we will hear more about that later).
David Cameron was on good form too. He was on a good wicket, after the revelation that Brown considered raising VAT to 18.5 per from 2011. In fact, the Tories suspect the Government thought about increasing it even further. The Tory leader accused Labour of having a secret "VAT bombshell," saying Monday's mini-Budget was not about helping the economic situation but Brown's political situation. He told Brown: "Isn't the real lesson from the Pre-Budget Report this: the country is going bankrupt, he's been found out and New Labour's dead."
Good stuff, but Brown hit back strongly. He said he had considered but rejected the sort of VAT rises that Tory Governments had implemented in the eighties and nineties, and instead decided to cut it (temporarily). Brown called Cameron "the do nothing leader of a do nothing party." Ouch. That could stick. Great game. Final score: Brown 3, Cameron 3.
