PMQs: Cameron mustn't get cocky

Today's PMQs—the first back after the election—was somewhat overshadowed by the sombre session which followed it. There, party leaders and other MPs united in tribute to the late Lib Dem Charles Kennedy as his 10-year-old son watched in the Commons gallery, peering out impassively from under red hair like his father's. David Cameron led the speeches: “as much as he was a man of strong views, he was a man of great loyalty,” said the Prime Minister, as his former deputy Nick Clegg—who benefitted from that loyalty during the coalition—nodded along.

But the flipside of Cameron's statesmanlike delivery in his tribute speech, was the overbearing confidence on show from the Prime Minister during his earlier Q&A, in which he found himself unchallenged by any meaningful opposition.

Under the coalition, Cameron usually faced questions from just one party leader—Ed Miliband, then the leader of the opposition. Now, with the Lib Dems consigned to the fringes of the Commons and an insurgent Scottish National Party out in force, he has to answer to two: Harriet Harman, Labour's interim leader, and Angus Robertson, the Westminster leader of the SNP.

It should have made for entertaining viewing, but neither could quite get their act together. Harman led on housing—she attacked Cameron's expansion of right-to-buy to Housing Associations, claiming that for every 10 council homes sold under the existing scheme in the last parliament, there had only been one built, and that the last government has failed to boost home ownership.

Cameron's responses were pretty lame—largely he just accused the Labour party of giving up on its new commitment to “aspiration.” But Harman's delivery was too tremulous to hammer the point home and she chose a poor follow-up topic, deciding to switch tack and ask the Prime Minister to reconfirm that child benefit would be protected in this parliament, which he happily did. It was a measure of Cameron's total confidence that by the time it came to the first PMQs appearance for new Labourite Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood MP)—who asked about the UK's triple-A credit rating—he felt able to joke that due to her interest in “fiscal responsibility and sustainability,” she should run for the leadership of her party. “In that one question she's made more sense than the rest of them put together,” he cried, to amused bellows from his benches.

Angus Robertson of the SNP, perhaps mindful of the rather rambunctious reputation his party has been getting since it returned to Westminster, struck a serious tone. He was the only leader to mention Charles Kennedy in his PMQs speech, before pressing the Prime Minister on the Mediterranean migrant crisis: “Why does the Prime Minister think that it is fair,” he asked, “for Sweden and for Germany and other countries to accept these refugees, while the UK turns its back on them?” that was solid, internationalist, progressive SNP territory, but it's also an area on which the government's line is firm: we need to focus on promoting strong government in Africa, particularly in Libya, and on tackling traffickers, in order to stop migrants making the journey. The SNP are keen to show that they are more than just a single-issue party, and rightly so, but the end result was that Cameron answered a question he was comfortable with, rather than being dragged on to thornier constitutional or devolutionary issues.

Tellingly, the only troubling moments came from Cameron's backbenches. Former Conservative Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell, an ally of the pro-Human Rights Act former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, asked the PM whether would rule out leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which he has found himself unable to do following a row between the left and right of his party. And Cameron was noticeably fawning in his response to Eurosceptic Peter Bone, who asked about the possibility of splitting the EU into two blocs."I think my honourable  friend makes a good point," Cameron said, before saying that he thinks Europe needs to allow for the fact that some countries, like Britain, aren't interested in being part of some key tenets of the EU. "We should accept that this sort of flexibility is here to stay," he said.

Harman's third line of attack—that the Prime Minister can't spend this parliament blaming Labour for his problems as he did in the last—fell a little flat. But as his party's faultlines start to surface, it may come to haunt him. To an extent, Cameron's confidence is justified, but he must be careful it doesn't spill over into smugness.