Illegitimate questions?

There is consensus that a clash over the Baby P affair, at Prime Minister’s Questions, was unseemly. And the weight of opinion seems to concur that Gordon Brown should take the lion’s share of blame for a heated altercation with David Cameron.

After all, it was the Prime Minister’s irritation that the Conservative leader had raised the issue at all, which saw him accuse Cameron of using the baby’s death to make a party political point. His evasiveness up to that point had led his counterpart to press him on the matter, which represents a quite legitimate area of concern.

It is not good enough, to elude responsibility for each issue, by arguing its unique unsuitability for the arena of party politics. Brown’s problem is that he does not like to be challenged, on anything, and he is prepared to play the emotive card in order to avoid a difficult question.

Comments

Anonymous said…
From what I gather I think beyond the obvious human cost in this instance there the deeper concern that this must never be allowed to happen again. For obvious reasons any inquiry must be completed by those not directly involved in the apparent failings of this case in the first place.

Maybe David Cameron did go a bit far and the public may perceive that as somewhat party political, but Gordon Brown was out of line and lost his temper.
13 November 2008 at 00:55
Dudley said…
Gordon Brown was out of order. David Cameron was correct to deliver the severity of this most horrific and unacceptable of appalling cases with the determination and concern that he did so to the PM and to rightly obtain a simple answer regarding having a completely independent inquiry with no involvement whatsoever from the department that failed the tortured tot 'Baby P'.
4 December 2008 at 18:48
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