Sketchup: PMQs 17 February 2010
A selection of lines from parliamentary sketch-writers.
The debate was dominated by the prime minister's admission that he had made a mistake in his evidence to the Iraq inquiry and the BA/Unite dispute.
The Guardian's Simon Hoggart likens the PM's revulsion at having to 'fess up to the way "a small child eats gristly beef - with great difficulty and with much resentment":
""When he does get it wrong, he has to find a way of saying that it wasn't really wrong wrong, more sort of right wrong."
In the Times Ann Treneman agrees, noting that an admittance of any kind of error from the prime minister is a rare event indeed:
"Until yesterday any Gordo retractions at PMQs were, like the dodo, mythical. So this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, like a double rainbow and Halley's Comet rolled into one. He looked miserable."
The Mail's Quentin Letts is surprised by Mr Brown's somewhat subdued mood so close to the general election:
"Had he been a specimen at Crufts you would have concluded that this sausage dog had a dry nose.
"Just a couple of weeks ago the lava flowed from Mr Brown, red and molten. Yesterday he was no more volcanic than a mole hill."
Simon Carr in the Independent notes that John Bercow's chosen style as Speaker has thrown up the issue of who calls time on his own increasingly lengthy interventions:
"His interventions have become comically long. His statement yesterday made a three-course meal out of a cupcake."
Links in full
Simon Hoggart | Guardian | Wrong wrongs? Right wrongs? It all felt wrong
Ann Treneman | Times | Brown exposed as union ties elicit mythical retraction
Quentin Letts | Daily Mail | Shades of a child drinking cod liver oil
Simon Carr | Independent | Bercow must play his cards right
Democracy Live | Prime Minister's Questions