Bankers’ bonuses may be even less popular with the public than the EU, so the Tories’ decision to oppose Brussels’s cap on bonuses was a political gift that Ed Miliband readily seized on at today’s PMQs. The Labour leader began amusingly by asking David Cameron how he would help “John in East London”, who earns £1m and is worried that his bonus may be capped at £2m. Cameron replied that bonuses were now a quarter of what they were under Labour and that he wouldn’t listen to “the croupier in the casino when it all went bust”. It was a strong reply – voters still blame the last Labour government for the cuts, rather than the coalition – but, politically speaking, it is hard for Cameron to reconcile this with his opposition to further curbs on bonuses.
Miliband went on to contrast the PM’s stance on bonuses, with his introduction of the “bedroom tax”. At this point, Cameron declared that before moving on to the “spare room subsidy” (the PM’s preferred term), he wanted Miliband to apologise for the “mess he left the country in”. When Cameron deploys this tactic, Miliband usually replies that “it’s called Prime Minister’s Questions, I ask the questions, he answers them”. But this week the Labour leader had prepared a wittier than ususal riposte. “It’s good to see him preparing for opposition,” he joked, adding that he was “looking forward” to facing Theresa May, whose leadership ambitions are the subject of growing speculation. At this quip, the Home Secretary shot Milband a look of thunder.
Much of the rest of the session was taken up by the “bedroom tax”, with Cameron accusing Labour of scaremongering over the policy. Referring all the time to the “spare room subsidy”, the PM said that pensioners and those with severely disabled children were “exempt” from the subsidy. Except they’re not; they will receive the subsidy. In his determination not to use “bedroom tax”, the PM ended up misdescribing his own policy. Cameron isn’t wrong to recognise the importance of “framing” the debate but after weeks in which the “bedroom tax” has become the media’s phrase of choice, he has left it too late to do so. Just as the “poll tax” triumphed over the “community charge”, so the “bedroom tax” will triumph over the (clunky) “spare room subsidy”.
But the PM was on stronger ground when he revealed that Labour had opposed £83bn of welfare cuts. The perception that the party is incapable of taking tough decisions and would simply “borrow more” is one that Cameron is rightly keen to encourage. And with Ed Balls and Ed Miliband unwilling to argue explicitly for deficit-financed stimulus, the charge that they are concealing their true intentions could gain ground.
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