Charles Moore, in the telegraph, deals incredibly eloquently and sensitively with an emotionally prickerly matter; articulating the unease that he felt after the anomalous cancellation of Prime Minister’s Questions following the tragic death of Ivan Cameron.
I feel Moore is perhaps a little unfair in his assessment of Gordon Brown’s motivation, especially given Brown’s personal circumstances. A fairer assesement might be that offering to cancel PMQ’s was a fine gesture for Brown to make and equally it was fine for the Tories to accept but ultimately the Speaker made the wrong decision and should have allowed PMQ’s to continue without David Cameron.
Having said that this is by no means the worst decision the Speaker has ever made (see Speaker Michael Martin) and given the current controversies in which he has been embroiled it is understandable that he didn’t want to be seen to be standing simultanously asgainst govenment and opposition.
Moore acknowledges that the general public probably feel that Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable’s tributes to Ivan were a good display of adversaries coming together over something tragic which “transcended” the usual politicking.
If they are each to be rightly commended for this then surely the decision of Nick Clegg to say almost nothing in public but simply to send private condolences should also be commended as the most elegant and selfless of possible gestures that a party leader could make?
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