‘Calm down dear’… it’s only PMQs

With just a month to go before their two week break for Whitsun MPs rushed back from three weeks of Easter holidays to attend Parliament for this two and a half day week. Not all appeared to have heard the call as the more corpulent members had clearly extra space to deploy their talents during the first outing for Prime Ministers Questions since March.

But for those who had made the journey, even if only to get good seats for the Royal Wedding , they were in for a treat. Many were clearly over-excited at seeing their chums after such a long break and proffered ritual insults by way of greeting across the chamber.

With elections due in Scotland and Wales and large parts of England next Thursday all sides were looking for that all-important and well thought out sound bite that would lead tonight’s television news and tomorrow’s newspapers.

Off the agenda of both party leaders was any discussion of next Thursday’s other ballot the referendum on the Alternative Vote as Labour is as split as the Coalition over the desired outcome. Out too any mention of foreign affairs since both sides have to seem to agree on anything involving the armed forces.

But at least we had the latest growth figures allowing the Prime Minister to present an increase of 0.5 per cent to the tune of happy days are here again and the hysterical support of his side.

Over the past few weeks Ed Miliband has come to the realization that less is more when it comes to his clashes with Dave. What he has worked out is the quieter he is the noisier the Prime Minister gets and so it was today.

Getting him going over the economy appeared easy and barracking from the Labour benches seem to move the PM’s colour from tan to ruddy red on the colour chart. But it was when Ed turned to the state of the National Health Service that the wheels finally came off. The NHS is a bit of a sore point for Dave since he has found himself stuck with the biggest political crisis of his so-far short career without ever planning it to be so.

Now whilst the Leader of the Labour Party may have decided that the PM is best slowly brought to the boil such constraints are not exercised by the other bully boys-and girls-on his side if the aisle . Thus whilst he insulted Dave graciously the rest practiced that other parliamentary custom of jeering ,shouting and pointing.

None more so it appeared than the Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, whose apparent intervention, aided and abetted by Angela Eagle, produced this political gem from the Prime Minister:

“Calm down dear “, he said.

It was former Labour deputy leader Denis Healey who memorably said:

“First law on holes: when you are in one, stop digging”.

But Dave, egged on by the more recidivist members of his side said it again:

“Calm down dear”.

For those who don’t know the origins of this phrase it belongs to the advertising part of the career of film director Michael Winner whose main claim to fame is to be responsible for the movies Death Wish 1, Death Wish 2 and Death Wish 3.

Death Wish 4 never existed, at least not until now. Yvette Cooper is the wife of the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls who was described by Dave during his last outing at PMQs as “the most annoying man in politics”.

Ed B looked suitably annoyed during the Winneresque episode and is not someone Dave might like to bump into in a dark alley having now had a go at both ends of the Cooper-Balls continuum.

Smiling throughout was Ed M, happy not only in victory but also because he is due to have a nose job on the very NHS that he had so successfully stuck up the nasal passage of Dave.