I don’t want to write Ed Miliband’s material for him but he’s got to get over this brother thing. Every week, at PMQs, Dave ribs Ed about the fact that he killed his brother (politically speaking, of course, but still bloody). Every week Ed looks surprised that anyone remembers this tiny fact. Someone should tell him (O brother, where art thou?) to get a grip.
David Cameron has had a terrible week and PMQs should have been an easy win for Ed. But the Labour leader also needs to remember that Dave does not have the nickname of Flashman for nothing. No one has as much front as this frontman.
Ed began with Libya. William Hague was not in the House (seeing the Queen, as you do, which was handy timing.) Ed ticked off the various embarrassments including last weekend’s “setback”, which is one way to describe the SBS being arrested by Libyan farmers. “Do you think that it is just a problem with the Foreign Secretary or is it a wider problem in your Government?”
Dave blustered, saying we are leading the world in diplomacy. Ed hit back: “Everybody will have heard the deafening silence about the performance of the Foreign Secretary.”
But Dave threw his arms around this question and gave it a hug. “I think we have an excellent Foreign Secretary,” he crowed. “When it comes to it, there is only one person around here I can remember knifing a Foreign Secretary.”
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He paused, as the screamtrack rose behind him like a surfer wave. “And I think I am looking at him.” The Tories chanted: “More!” But Dave declined: “I think we’ve dealt with that.”
But apparently not. “The more you bring my relatives into this ,” said Ed, “the more that we know you are losing the argument. I have a second cousin in Belgium that you will be going after next.”
I found this quite strange. First, it’s not “my relatives”, it’s your brother, David, the one not on your front bench. Then there is that second cousin in Belgium. Just hearing the word “Belgium” makes everyone laugh but when coupled with “second cousin”, it’s just geeky.
“I think the leader of the Labour Party is getting a little bit touchy about this issue,” taunted Dave.
Of course Flashman was right. Dave couldn’t resist now. Suddenly everything had a brother angle, even the police on the beat: “Whether we have to divert them to protect your relatives, I do not know.”
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Ed just shook his head. But, oh brother, he needs to do more than that. No more family trees. Anyway, why were we talking about the Milibands when the Marx Brothers seem to be running the Government?