Cameron should go for the jugular

AT every opportunity, Gordon Brown slates the 1979-97 Tory government for having created record interest rates, high unemployment, and vast numbers of house repossessions.

And each week at Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron lets him get away this tirade. It's about time the Conservatiove leader hit back.

Why not remind Brown of the 1974-79 Labour government, which was evicted from office because of the winter of discontent, with bodies piling up in funeral homes and rubbish littering the streets because of strikes against the Callaghan government's economic chaos, which landed the UK deeper in the mire with the International Monetary Fund while unable to curb the excesses of the trade unions.

All Cameron does is to accuse the Prime Minister of not giving straight answers. Brown was at it again yesterday. Remember, he shouted, the 15% interest rates, 10% unemployment. "We will not go back to that."

Times change. And as Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg said after another prime ministerial rant: "We don't want history lessons." (Just as well, or we'd be discussing how a Liberal prime minister used to sell hereditary peerages in an outrageously corrupt example of `cash for honours.')

But it's time Gordon Brown was reminded of the mess left by the Callaghan government which Margaret Thatcher had to clear up. All parties have history of which they cannot be proud - Suez, groundnuts, appeasement, devaluation, the list is endless - but while the current Prime Minister is unable to answer a single question without harking back to the past, then Cameron should join in the fun.

Nick Clegg was right on another score about Brown 's history lessons. "People want to hear about the future." Of course they do, and that's not we get from either history teacher Brown or policy-light Cameron.

All of which left Jo Swinson, the chirpy Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, to ask Brown if the weekly bear garden of Prime Minister's Questions was really the way to hold sensible debates in British politics. I'm afraid she didn't get a straight answer from Gordon Brown, but did she really expect one?

Still all members of the House joined together to wish (Glasgow) Rangers FC all the best in tonight's UEFA cup final clash in Manchester. Well, we assume all side of the House. Cameron wondered if Dr John Reid, the one-time defence, health and home secretaries would concur. After all, he is chairman of arch rivals Celtic FC.

As for the Speaker, he smiled avuncularly. But of course, as a Glasgow MP who is also a Roman Catholic, he would  favour the green and white hoops over the blue of the 'Gers.