Wednesday 13th June 2012 | 18:43

PMQs sketch: comrades survive as Miliband stutters

PMQs was always going to be an excitable affair. Returning after a three week break, and with the Jeremy Hunt saga rumbling on, MPs were looking forward to half-an-hour of shouting. 

Indeed, as Ed Miliband pointed out, Tory MPs were under strict instruction to do so. "Comrades," the Labour leader quoted from a memo issued by Desmond Swayne, an aide to David Cameron. "Please show sufficient stamina for the full half-hour..."

As Labour MPs cheered their support for Mr Miliband, Tory MPs looked around for help. Should they follow the memo at this point or not? As they waited anxiously for further instruction, their dear leader came to the rescue and pointed out that 'comrade' was a "term of endearment" on the Conservative benches, "not an official title." Phew. Back to the memo.

But what they call Nick Clegg, however, may not be so endearing. The Deputy Prime Minister had instructed his MPs to abstain in that afternoon’s vote on whether Jeremy Hunt should be referred to Sir Alex Allan, the independent adviser on the ministerial code, leaving behind a trail of destruction and fleeing for the soothing calm of the Leveson inquiry.

But in his absence Mr Hunt sat tightly next to Vince Cable, while Ed Davey played the Lib Dem leader’s part of silent discomfort to perfection. Instead it was Baroness Warsi, watching on from the peers' gallery, who looked nervous. The baroness heard the Prime Minister explain that while she had been referred to Sir Alex Allan, but Jeremy Hunt didn’t need the same treatment as he was already involved in a judge-led inquiry. Who said so? Sir Alex himself

With a flourish, Mr Cameron unveiled a letter from Sir Alex, which was a reply to Mr Cameron's letter that same morning – who says Royal Mail doesn’t deliver when it has to? Sir Alex confirmed that he could not "add usefully to the facts" while the Leveson inquiry is ongoing. That doesn't exactly mean he couldn’t investigate the case, but the letter did the trick in knocking Miliband off course. 

Instead he asked why Nick Clegg was not supporting Mr Cameron in the vote on Jeremy Hunt? The Lib Dems were abstaining, Mr Cameron clinically replied, because "they didn’t have that relationship" with the Murdoch empire enjoyed by Labour and the Tories. "I understand that – it's politics", he added, an answer which, if you think about it, could justify pretty much any decision made by any government ever.

By now Mr Miliband, having used every question on Hunt and Leveson, had expected to unleash his knock out blow. But the Tory jeers drowned out his reedy-voiced moment of triumphalism. "He was the future once" Mr Miliband eventually shouted over the noise, repeating a line used by Mr Cameron when at his most-confident in the Commons, inadvertently prompting a bigger cheer from the Tories than his own benches.

He looked deflated, while Mr Cameron’s confidence simmered over. When Steve Rotheram, the amiable Liverpudlian MP, made a hash of his question about multi-tasking, Mr Cameron reminded him of the merits of Michael Gove's proposed poetry reading classes. "Snob" shouted an angry Labour backbencher, but Mr Cameron wasn't listening. Instead he sauntered out of the Chamber with a hefty pat on the back from George Osborne to help him on his way. Comrades in arms, you might say.