Cameron spits his dummy

There was a fascinating clash today between Gordon Brown and David Cameron when the latter used his six questions at Prime Minister's Questions to press Brown to agree that Sharon Shoesmith of Haringey Council was not the right person to investigate the failings of her own department in respect of the death of a seventeen-month old boy... Baby P.

Gordon Brown soberly resisted Cameron's invitation to agree that an internal investigation was inappropriate and when Cameron accused him of failing to answer the question, Brown accused Cameron of insensitively playing politics.

Cameron's reaction to this was so furious that viewers could be fooled into thinking that the accusation was unjust. Certainly the panellists who offer a post-match analysis on The Daily Politics seemed to think so. Charles Kennedy, Nick Robinson and even Labour MP Jon Cruddas all joined Andrew Neil in condemning the Prime Minister for being cold and unemotional when discussing the death of the infant. This they contrasted with Cameron's rage which they appear to think had been provoked by a human response to the tragedy.

Anyone who agrees with the interpretation of the exchange suggested by Andrew Neil and his guests should take another look. David Cameron’s anger is not aroused by the death of a child or by the failure of Haringey Council to prevent it... his anger is provoked by Gordon Brown correctly chiding him for attempting to make political capital out of the incident. Gordon Brown was neither cold nor unemotional in his response... he displayed a temperate and responsible attitude.

Cameron’s opening question about the death of Baby P included the peevish observation that “nobody has taken responsibility, nobody has resigned”. Running through all of Cameron’s questions and observations was a thinly veiled attack on Haringey council and the Conservative Party leader grew increasingly agitated with the Prime Minister’s reluctance to sign up for his witch hunt against Sharon Shoesmith.

In fact, the Prime Minister was quite right to show circumspection while David Cameron’s tabloid headline analysis was immature and unhelpful. When BBC pundits Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson admired Cameron’s display of emotion and condemned Gordon Brown for appearing ‘tone deaf’, they appear to forget that those who incite a mob are ‘emotional’... it isn’t always a good thing to be.

When asking the question that provoked Brown to express his regret that Cameron was playing party politics with the tragedy, the Tory leader spat out the words: “I don’t expect an answer now, you never get one [from Brown]” as an angry aside. This is language used by Cameron week after week on PMQs and, when he’s pressing the Prime Minister for a response on a political matter, it's a fair enough comment on Brown's modus operandi and very much part of the rough and tumble of adversarial politics. But when discussing matters of this gravity... it is ill-judged.

Quite why Cameron imagines Brown’s charge to have been unfounded is extremely hard to fathom. The idea that Cameron would have levelled criticism at Haringey in this fashion if it were a Conservative-run local authority is laughable and there was no question at all that he was seeking to blame the child's death on a Labour-run council.

It’s ironic that Cameron chose to characterise as “cheap” Brown’s assertion that his opposite number was playing politics with tragedy because ‘cheap’ is the perfect word to describe the Conservative leader’s decision to focus attention on the Baby P affair. It was a transparent effort to avoid asking questions about the economy... something Cameron is keen to do because of the manner in which the Tories have repeatedly fumbled the opportunity to snatch the initiative on the financial meltdown.

Gordon Brown refused to be drawn into easy criticism that would necessarily have pre-judged the outcomes of the various enquiries. What’s amazing about this whole business is the consensus in the studio of The Daily Politics that Brown had somehow failed because the public prefer their leaders to offer an ill-considered knee-jerk response. To judge from their analysis, you would think that Brown had declared that Baby P’s death was ‘just one of those things’. In fact, in Brown’s first response to Cameron, he said: “I believe I speak for the whole country [when I say] that people are not only shocked and saddened but are horrified and angered by what they have seen reported”. A fitting and dignified response to the tragedy by any measure.

Charles Kennedy’s analysis included the opinion that Tony Blair would have handled the exchange with more aplomb. In a sense, he’s right... Blair was a master of the faltering voice and the quivering lip but, ironically, this ability for superficiality was one of the sticks used to beat the former Prime Minister.

Are we really suggesting that Brown should be condemned for not maximising the sensationalism? Should we really criticise a Prime Minister because he lacks for lacking the acting skills required to milk a tragedy? No, we should celebrate the fact that our current Prime Minister is resistant to the obvious temptations and offers instead an intelligent and measured response to a dreadful tragedy.