NOTHING NEW

by RAY FLEMING
HAVING survived a tough press conference and a hostile Parliamentary Labour Party meeting on Monday, Tony Blair was well primed for his Question Time in the Commons yesterday. David Cameron needed to do more than rehash the points the prime minister had already fielded from the media and Labour MPs but he failed to produce anything really new. For the Leader of the Opposition to tell Mr Blair that he has lost support and should go does not have much resonance when he has already heard the same message from his own MPs. Mr Cameron had a good line about Mr Blair having once visited Khartoum “to see where Gordon was murdered” but these prepared and rehearsed jokes do not have the same effect as the rapier-like parliamentary wit which can really wound. David Cameron has some good scriptwriters. One of them, apparently, is also employed by the Bulletin. On Monday in this space I said that by claiming that naming a date for his departure would “paralyse the government” Mr Blair overlooked the fact that his refusal to name a date was having exactly the same effect. This was Mr Cameron's final punch line. Menzies Campbell was not seen to advantage. He asked what the prime minister was doing about problems in three key departments; having mentioned the first two he then, embarrassingly, had to refer to his notes for the third, and lamely named it as the Home Office. Mr Blair let him off lightly.