There was a time during these sessions last year, albeit a long time ago now, when Forrest found a sort of resonance and a degree of what looked suspiciously like success for pinning the accusation of chaotic policy making and hasty U turns on Dave and his government. NHS reform and forest privatisation were the most noteworthy issues that embarrassed Dave. HS2 might be another, although since there is all party consensus on the need for this 21st century folly, Labour may find it difficult to cause red faces there.
Over the last few days though, Labour has been looking fairly chaotic itself and not just when rushing to sack someone who posted a Downfall parody of Alex Salmond. So what? Isn't Forrest supposed to be a geek? Isn't he supposed to get this sort of thing?
No, Labour has been trying a bit of policy. No, really. Or at least they have attempted to perform a U turn or two on what was kind of sort of their policy on the cuts, whilst of course claiming to be doing anything but. Meanwhile the mutterings about Forrest's leadership, not to mention his, ahem, unconventional looks, have been getting louder, although the calls for the critics to shut up were just as loud. But then what do you expect from John Prescott?
But it is the U turns that have been more telling. Labour doesn't really have many actual policies. They have a lot of slogans and positions but nothing which might actually achieve the land of milk and honey and fairness for all that they like to promise. Now it seems they are actually performing U turns even on their slogans. Ed Balls gave one of his typically slippery speeches at the weekend. The cuts that were too far and too fast remain so he insisted but they wouldn't actually reverse them.The government has been telling us that there is no alternative to the cuts. Did Ed Balls and his boss now agree? That would be quite a U turn, even one based purely on slogans and sanctimony.
All in all then this promised to be a session that could be difficult for Forrest. Whatever he chose to throw at Dave, the PM would have plenty to throw back, including some examples of friendly fire from Forrest's own party.
Fortunately Forrest can rely on a nice easy subject for him and an awkward one for Dave at least once a month for the foreseeable future. The unemployment figures came out. Surely even Forrest couldn't cock this one up?
The trouble with this of course is that it does invite the two of them to just parrot the lines of the month before and the month before that and the....well, you get the idea. It would save a lot of time if Forrest were to simply do what he does in his speeches and interviews and just say the same thing over and over again. Dave could simply stand up and say 'I refer the honourable gentleman to the silver lining I found last month and the contrast with the last government I found the month before.'
Because that was what we got. Forrest asked his question, Dave said it was all very disappointing, found cause for optimism, read out a list of measures the government was taking. Forrest accused him of complacency in that voice he uses to suggest he is outraged and appalled and even accused him, apropo of who knew what, of boasting. This was the closest he got to wrongfooting Dave because he had been very careful to sound measured, concerned and borderline contrite. He looked quite hurt.
It all ended with a slight flourish when Dave rounded off by referring to Forrest's U turns and accused him, not unreasonably, of not being terribly good even at those, but it did all feel rather like going through the motions. Even Ed Balls, possibly because he felt it inappropriate to be enjoying bad unemployment figures, was quiet and a little less annoying than usual. He still managed to look smug though. But when Forrest is low key, usually because of his own travails but occasionally because of world events, Dave fails to raise his game. So we had another damp squib.
Ultimately the only bit of excitement was at the end when Dennis Skinner stood up and went through his Tory and Murdoch hating routine, asking Dave when he would be appearing before the Leveson Inquiry. Dave said he would be happy to appear but had not yet been invited. But he thanked the beast of Bolsover for sparing him and his children the journey to Kensington to see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum.
Forrest had experimented earlier with a line comparing this government to the 1980s. Perhaps he has been to see The Iron Lady this week. Or perhaps he has been reminded of this by his own run-ins with Labour's other dinosaurs in the Trade Union movement. But he would do well to remember that that decade, though a running sore for the likes of Skinner and the unions, was not a happy one for Labour. They were similarly deluded about the world then and had a leader who tried to look tough and stand up to the lefties. This week Forrest has even used the word tough when responding to his critics. His problem remains that, when he used it and tried to look forthright and determined, one couldn't help but laugh.
PS
Apparently some, like the increasingly ridiculous Rachel Reeves and Luciana Berger have been trying to kick up a stink about Dave being rude about Dennis Skinner and calling him a dinosaur. This is ageist apparently. Really? What particular constituency do you imagine that kind of argument is going to play to? Sometimes there is no helping these metropolitan socialists purporting to represent the working class. Apparently they haven't noticed that most of the country doesn't actually subscribe to their Guardian view of the world.
And anyway, lest we forget, Dennis Skinner is not above a bit of parliamentary verbal jousting himself. It isn't that long since the nasty old curmudgeon called the PM a plonker. The finding offence police really need to get a life, or get out more, preferably in their constituencies.
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