It is traditionally the leader of the opposition who calls for the prime minister to resign. At today’s PMQs, in another extraordinary moment, we witnessed the reverse. “For heaven’s sake man, go!” David Cameron cried at Jeremy Corbyn, echoing Oliver Cromwell’s address to the rump parliament (“in the name of God, go!”) and Leo Amery’s appeal to Neville Chamberlain in the 1940 Norway debate.
While it was in his “party’s interests” for Corbyn to “sit there”, Cameron said, it wasn’t “in the national interest”. Some will regard this as a cunning ruse to strengthen the Labour leader’s position. But to my ear, Cameron sounded entirely sincere as he spoke. With just two months left as prime minister, he has little interest in seeking political advantage. But as he continues to defy appeals from his own side to resign, the addition of a Tory PM to the cause will only aid Corbyn’s standing among members.
After rumours that Labour MPs would boycott the session, leaving a sea of empty benches behind Corbyn, they instead treated their leader with contemptuous silence. Corbyn was inevitably jeered by Tory MPs when he observed that Cameron only had “two months left” to leave a “a One Nation legacy” (demanding “the scrapping of the bedroom tax, the banning of zero-hours contracts, and the cancelling of cuts to Universal Credit”). Cameron conceded that “we need do more to tackle poverty” before deriding Corbyn’s EU referendum campaigning. “I know the Hon. Gentleman says he put his back into it. All I can say is I’d hate to see it when he’s not trying.”
The other notable moment came when Theresa May supporter Alan Duncan contrasted Angela Merkel with “Silvio Borisconi” (a Hansard first). Cameron replied: “Neither of the people he’s talking about are candidates in this election, it’s an election I will stay out of … I was given lots of advice, one of them was not to go to a party with Silvio Berlusconi and I’m glad I took it.” Given the recent fate of those who personally mocked Johnson during the referendum campaign, Duncan’s jibe may not do May’s cause much more help now.
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