PMQs: Brown on Unite and the BA dispute

Gordon Brown has admitted that he has gone beyond calling for talks in his phone conversations with both sides in the BA dispute.

He said at PMQs he had got into detail about whether the draft agreement cast to one side last week could be salvaged.

He said he thought it would.

Meanwhile David Cameron doggedly stuck to the line that the PM should urge Unite members to cross picket lines this weekend.

Gordon Brown responded that such a thing would provoke not resolve… not a vote-winner in Carshalton but it might get some of Charlie Whelan’s phone-bashers back onside doing work for Labour.

Nick Clegg just said Charlie Whelan and Lord Ashcroft are as bad as each other. One Labour MP waved his wallet at Nick Clegg.

It looked to me as though it was the same bright spark – Ronnie Campbell – who last week opened up a line of attack for David Cameron by calling senior military figures “Tories” … maybe, with only a few PMQs left before the election, the whips might like him to go on a fact-finding mission somewhere far away.