PMQs: perfect storm for Nick Clegg

With Dave out in Beijing trying to flog democracy, not to mention a few business deals, to the Chinese and Ed holed up in Primrose Hill on paternity leave it was deputies all round at PMQs.

It should have been easy for after all it was the perfect storm. Outside the chamber 30,000 angry students wanted his head over tuition fees, inside opposition MPs – not to mention a few sneaky Tories – wanted everything else.

He was there on time, slightly pale, fiddling with his notes. On his right a minister of such fame that no-one seemed to know him and on his left the real deputy Prime Minister William Hague who had obviously been told by Dave where to put his hand up Nick’s back.

Tuition fees

It is only six months since Nick Clegg pledged his party would to go to the wall over any increases in tuition fees and the students were there to remind him.

Faced with this rare example of a politician promising one thing when out of power and another once sitting comfortably in the ministerial motor, Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman was surely on a winner.

Had Nick “met up with a dodgy bloke” in Freshers’ Week and done something he would regret, she asked, to the general enjoyment of the House.

How could he explain his change of mind? To a man who just six months ago who would have bet his own salary on never being in Government, the answer was simple: everything had changed.

He had only recently, it would appear, come to realise just how bad things were, clearly something he hadn’t spotted all those weeks ago.

With the House now happily out of hand the Speaker rose, if that’s the right word, to his feet to tell MPs that the public was unhappy when it couldn’t hear what the honourable members were saying. This claim so stunned the House that it was momentarily quiet.

Back at the despatch box Nick, glad of any interruption, shuffled and blinked nervously. William grimaced, adjusted his hand and the Deputy Prime Minister slid down onto the bench.

Harriet Harman attack

But as Harriet popped up for another go it suddenly became clear it was not all going her way. In one of those rare moments when the televising of parliament actually lets you see what is happening, it was obvious not all on her side were happy.

On Sunday Harriet had taken to the TV studios to condemn her former colleague Phil Woolas found guilty of spreading lies about his Lib Dem opponent during the General Election, and banned as an MP.

Harriet went on to say Mr Woolas was out on his ear even if he wins an unlikely appeal.

This whiff of kangaroo court behaviour from someone who was the Shami Chakrabarti of the 1980s has gone down like a lead balloon among MPs including one who said “a period of silence from Harriet Harman would now be very welcome.”

Obviously he did not expect that period to start before 12.30pm so PMQs staggered on.

The Speaker now in full Zebedee mode was up again to remind the House that the nation had downed tools at noon to hear them, but to no avail.

He achieved one rare moment of peace when he called the honourable Labour member for Luton Gavin Shuker to ask a question.

Good hair is a hallmark of new parliament

It was not his question which caught the attention of observers but his hair which looked as if its owner had stuck his fingers into an electrical socket.

Good hair is one of the marks of this new parliament and Nick, although under the political cosh, at least looked well coiffed as he took his punishment.

And as the nation hung on to every word of this half hour in the mother of parliaments, hair came to the fore again.

Student fees aside, hadn’t Harriet called his good friend Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent”, said Nick.

Danny, otherwise known as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, does have hair towards the red end of the colour spectrum but then he is Scottish and this colour is not unusual north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Harriet seemed to blush the colour of Danny’s locks and she too sat down with some relief.

The great skill, indeed, purpose, of PMQs is of course to never answer what you are asked and always answer what you are not so if you bothered to actually read what was said it would add not one jot to the sum of human knowledge.

The Speaker popped up one final time to say the public wanted to hear what the MPs had to say, meanwhile the nation had gone to lunch.

Peter McHugh is the former director of programmes at GMTV and was this year awarded the Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award.