Harriet Harman loses out at PMQs

After the cancellation of Prime Ministers Questions last week because of the death of young Ivan Cameron it was back to business as usual today. Well, not quite. With David Cameron not present as not unreasonably he is on compassionate leave and with Gordon Brown in the US it was down to the battle of the substitutes - Harriet Harman, William Hague and Vince Cable. Ms Harman has coped pretty well with Hague in previous outings but not this time. The talk of Westminster at the moment apparently is Harriet's positioning to take over from Brown whenever he steps down as leader or is eased out. Cleverly Hague waited for the moment before making reference to the ambitions of HH, he certainly had opposition members guffawing and a few Labour MPs had difficulty in trying to stay serious. Harman was really shrill and although she managed a couple of retorts they were in the glancing blow category I thought.

The other day I suggested that Sir Fred Goodwin be stripped of his title in the belief that he was knighted for "his services to banking". It was a Plaid Cymru MP who suggested at PMQs that Sir Fred lose his knighthood but Ms Harman's response was that it was his work for 'The Princes Trust' that led to him being honoured. So was I and I guess millions of others wrong in our belief about this. Answer: no we weren't. Harriet Harman made an awful gaffe and her office made a retraction a little later in the afternoon. She has been very outspoken about the Goodwin pension and surely this demonstrates that she is not on top of her brief. Or does it? Some have surmised that if she knew the real reason for bestowing the honour then this might have been highly embarrassing to state in as much as it would have reflected yet more bad judgment by G Brown. Whatever, she didn't perform at all well today.

Harriet Harman becomes Harassed Harman

I watched PMQs at noon today and, this time with Gordon away continuing to save the planet's financial systems or some such thing, it was the Deputies doing the talking. Now in previous encounters Harriet Harman had performed confidently when taking on William Hague giving as good if not better than what she had got. With Brown's perceived adroit handling of the banking crisis she might have imagined that today's PMQs would be a breeze. Unluckily for her it was anything but, in reality she put on a simply dreadful performance and she knew it. Stumbling over her responses, getting "Hon" and "Rt Hon" mixed up when answering her questioners, and generally looking less than competent Hague and Cable easily got the better of her in my opinion. Contrasting with Brown at the last PMQs when there was cheering and waving of order papers her statements were received in near silence from the MPs sat behind her. She certainly looked harassed through the half hour I thought.

Currently the fortunes of the political parties are in a very volatile state. Brown may be walking tall right now but he would do well to remember recent history. It was only in the summer of 2007 little more than 12 months ago that he seemed to be almost walking on water. He did his statesmanlike thing when addressing the crises of the summer: terrorist outrages, flooding, foot and mouth, matters he dealt with competently enough but I don't doubt that others would have coped just as well. Then Cameron called his bluff on the election that never was and everything started to unwind for Brown. Of course Labour are spinning the line that all our financial woes are down to either the American sub-prime market or those evil bankers but it was "nothing to do with us guv". How well they can sell this and how well they deal with the upcoming recession might well decide the result of the next General Election.