Blair feels Dunwoody's lash

Sketch
By Nick Assinder
Political Correspondent, BBC News website

Labour's plain-talking Gwyneth Dunwoody said it best, when pushing Tony Blair off a particularly long answer.

Ms Dunwoody was not easily charmed

"You were moving into automatic mode," she declared.

It is something the prime minister does. He is now so experienced in facing these liaison committee cross-examinations, just as he is used to facing his monthly press conferences or question time, he can virtually do them in his sleep.

The answers are so well developed, through constant repetition, it is hard to lock on to them for any length of time.

Even the occasional eruption of anger or other emotion raises the nagging, and possibly unworthy suspicion, they have suffered from the same degree of over-rehearsal.

It makes for dull viewing, apart from the occasions when a questioner manages to either hit a raw nerve, challenge one of the prime minister's certainties or, more usually, stray into party point scoring.

It was that last one which prompted the putdown from Ms Dunwoody, whose skills are second only to those of Marx himself - Groucho that is.

Kicked off

Tory David Maclean got into a row with the prime minister over the "shambles" that is the Home Office.

Mr Blair initially adopted one of his chummy, inclusive modes and referred to the time when "David" was a Home Office minister in the last government. And that is when it kicked off.

Mr Maclean could not stop himself from blurting out that, when he was a minister, the Home Office was not a shambles.

Blair tried the chummy approach

Cue the prime ministerial speak-your-weight machine as it spat out a list of statistics challenging that view and telling Mr Maclean not to be daft.

Ms Dunwoody quickly had enough of all this and stepped in to move onto other questions.

A disappointed Mr Blair declared that was a shame because he was enjoying himself.

"I rather thought that," said Ms Dunwoody. "That is why I am moving on. You were moving into automatic mode."

Surely the prime minister has known Ms Dunwoody long enough to have learned you don't get around her with chumminess and a little joke. She is a past master at getting the last word.

A volunteer

But he kept trying it. And he kept getting a verbal slap for his pains.

At one point, during a debate over the problems of managing mass migration, Ms Dunwoody offered: "Life is difficult prime minister."

He fell for it, replying with a smile: "Thank you for recognising that."

The response was withering: "I thought it was what you were paid for."

What he is not paid for - at least what no other recent prime minister has accepted as part of their job description - is to subject himself to this sort of grilling. He is a volunteer.

But, while these sessions may lack something in the way of excitement, they do serve as a very useful reference point for the prime minister's official stand on a whole range of issues - in this case from terrorism through nuclear energy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

On terrorism, for example, we got the clearest sign yet that he wants more to be done by community leaders to counter the anti-Western culture he believes is permeating some sections of the Muslim community.

Finally, he was teased about his successor - and he did the next prime minister no favours at all.

Asked whether he expected the next PM to carry on the practice of appearing before the committee twice a year, he went further.

"You could make them weekly," he joked.

Was that a sparkle I spotted in Ms Dunwoody's eye?

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