Arguing over tragedy

There are tragedies, there are horrific murders; this is a terrible mix of the two. And with all events like this, there will be lessons to be learnt and ways to try to prevent a repetition of this. I'm not quite sure what the best way is for people to establish what those lessons are. But what I'm pretty fucking sure of is that Gordon Brown will not be providing those answers. And, I suspect, nor will David Cameron.

Take this exchange from the Commons:

1214 Mr Cameron is clearly very angry with Mr Brown's claim about party politics. The Speaker tells MPs not to shout. Mr Cameron says he is not guilty of party politics and again says the PM should withdraw his accusation that Mr Cameron was playing party politics. Mr Brown says the whole House should agree that the government is doing the right thing in relation to the Baby P case.

So we have one politician calling for the house to agree with him, without really offering any reason why people would agree with him. And then you have another politician asking the first politician to apologise for accusing him of making a party political point about the case; and in doing so making it into a party political point. And whilst I have more sympathy for Cameron than for Brown in the exchange, I have to say that neither politician actually gets to the heart of the matter and really talks about what can be done to prevent a repetition of this case.

What happened in the Commons today was two men making snide comments at each other, whilst their minions bayed each other like randy farmyard dogs. This had nothing to do with trying to find out what happened, and learning the lessons from this case. It had to do with pride, it had to do with bruised egos and desperation to be popular. And I found the whole thing utterly distasteful.

Don't get me wrong, I have no idea what could prevent this sort of thing in the future either. But I am prepared to hold up my hands and admit to that. I can think of lots of different ideas, many of which contradict each other. And, as terrible as it sounds, I don't actually know whether there is something than can actively be done to stop this sort of thing from happening again. But what I would have liked to have seen today is both Brown and Cameron, backed by their parties, standing up in the Commons and admitting that they do not know how to deal with this tragic event. And I would have liked to have seen them have a debate, a discussion, about this death and the implications. Chance would be a fine fucking thing, I know. But it would have been a slightly more edifying picture in the Commons this afternoon that what actually happened.

Which could be best summarised as two petulant divas having an irrelevant row with each other.