Parliamentary sketch: campaign trailer

Going into the General Election, it is hard to escape the feeling that this will be a weird one, with the SNP, Greens and UKIP all poised to make inroads into the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem vote.

It was evident at PMQs, with the posturing and snarling pointing to one thing – the vote is nearly upon us, and pretty much everyone is nervous.

It started with defected UKIP MP Mark Reckless getting booed like some sort of soap-opera villain while asking Cameron about his thoughts on TV debates.

The PM is obviously concerned by the idea of giving the party yet more TV time – hence the pantomime reaction – though the way the polls are going in some areas it is not so much ‘they’re behind you’ as ‘they’re neck and neck with you’.

The rise has been fast. Labour MP Jamie Reed recently described UKIP as ‘not so much a political party, as a stag night out of control’, and it is easy to see what he means – even if a UKIP stag night is a fairly terrifying prospect.

You can imagine most weekends turn into a kind of Fear and Loathing in Luton-type adventure, with the gang stumbling around accusing the weather of homosexuality before trying to find a takeaway owned by someone of an acceptable nationality. Maybe only a ‘full-English’ would do.

And the morning after party conference must be particularly hellish. Most people only have to confront a hangover after a big night; UKIP has to confront whatever new policies it invented. 

Farage must live in terror of waking up to find the hastily scrawled etchings of a new policy written on the bathroom mirror in lipstick, before having to go on the Andrew Marr show and defend plans to make cats swear fealty to the crown, or to invade Ireland.  

The party seems drawn to calamity like a slapstick character, and though the natural reaction would be to get help, maybe bring someone in to finesse the party’s image, the leadership would probably end up accidentally blacking them up or something.

Still, with 100 days to go, there are unlikely to be further defections from the Tories. However, things were pretty tense. MPs howled and booed. They whistled and catcalled. 

Speaker John Bercow tried to maintain order, flapping his black robed arms like some sort of weird posh bat who, through some sort of administrative mix up, found himself appointed headmaster of a rioting private school against his will. 

“Most people only have to confront a hangover after a big night; UKIP has to confront whatever new policies it invented”

In the midst of the chaos, William Hague, Leader of the House, meanwhile looked gnomic. That is, not gnomic in the wise, enigmatic sense of the word, but rather gnomic in the sense that he looks like a gnome. 

The spectacle was perhaps not the best advert for British democracy, but at least Cameron was able to wax lyrical about it when asked about the need to get more people registered to vote, and then about teaching children about the significance of the Magna Carta.

Cameron said: “We must teach children in schools how our constitution has evolved and what rights we have, because pride in those things is important in understanding what a precious jewel we have in a functioning democracy under the rule of law.”

You can of course pawn precious jewels.

Then again, the PM looked very relaxed. This could partly be down to new figures showing an upturn in the job market, or partly because of the trouble Miliband still seems to be having in leading the opposition.

Labour seems forever haunted by the Blair years, with the furore over the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry’s report into the invasion of Iraq still hanging over the party. 

To be fair, Miliband started off his questions with a call for speedy publication, as did a few other members. Asked for his view, Cameron expressed his frustration in the delay.

He said: “It is an independent inquiry, and it would not be right for the Prime Minister to try to interfere with that inquiry, but I feel sure that when the report does come out, it will be thorough and it will be comprehensive.”

While some demand publication, others have countered with the seemingly self-evident truth that the report should not be published until it is finished. 

But this misses the point; the inquiry has been going on since 2009 and the report is already finished. No one is demanding that Chilcot publishes it sentence by sentence, or recites the whole thing as he thinks of it, like some stream of consciousness beat poem. 

Yet, seemingly, no one is exactly sure what is holding it up. Everyone mentioned gets to read it first, so are some witnesses just really, really slow readers? Maybe they didn’t print enough copies. Maybe Tony Blair keeps repeatedly spilling Fanta on it or something. 

Certainly most guesses have centred on the idea that the former PM is responsible for the delay – though both Cameron and Menzies Campbell used PMQs to deny that the slow progress was down to the behaviour of witnesses.

Still, at the end of the session, it was pretty obvious how Labour and the Tories will approach the election – basically, the tactic is to scream incoherently at each other and do their best to ignore UKIP, the Greens and the SNP. 

Parties carry out hugely sophisticated analysis to find out what buttons to push in reaching voters, and that complexity was on show here.

For Miliband, the key will be proving the PM is uncaring about the effects of austerity, “The Prime Minister thinks everything is hunky-dory.”

Cameron, though, had a comeback prepared, replying, “He is wrong about everything.”

And this is just the start.