Fraser Nelson

With a little help from the Daily Telegraph, David Cameron staged an ambush for Gordon Brown at PMQs today – the letter to Keith Vaz from Geoff Hoon promising he will be “rewarded” for supporting the government. It went up on the Telegraph website just before midday, and either David Cameron’s Blackberry is working with efficient speed or he had advance notice. Certainly more notice than Brown who was stuffed. Poor Hoon tried to look composed, knowing the television cameras would be turning to him. But his face went beetroot red, as Cameron read out his letter to Vaz. “I wanted you to know how much I appreciated all your help ... I trust that it will be appropriately rewarded!” It was a gotcha moment.

I have always considered the West Lothian Answer to be fairly simple. The Speaker decides if legislation is England-only, and if so then only English MPs get to vote on it. This has been in the last two Tory manifestos - but Ken Clarke today offers something different. He suggests all MPs vote on second readings of all legislation, but only English MPs vote at the committee stages of England-only legislation. Scots MPs would be unable to block any amendments, but would have the right to team up with government rebels and vote the whole thing down. Or, in the deplorable case of English university top up fees and foundation hospitals, thwart government rebels and foist unpopular policy on England that won’t affect them.

Sometimes you really do wonder if Labour’s wide-eyed Euro supporters realise just how tightly they have tied their own hands. Take Jack Straw, proposing new “emergency legislation” to allow anonymous witnesses in trials. No one seems to have mentioned the European Convention on Human Rights, which is senior to English law since our gullible MPs incorporated it in the 1998 Human Rights Act. In doing so, they handed to Strasbourg the right to decide what was a “fair trial”. Straw is understandably furious about the £6m murder case collapsing when the Law Lords said anonymous witnesses were inadmissible. As The Times pointed out, dozens more cases are now at risk.

With a 13,500 Labour majority, Glasgow East is as unwinnable for the SNP as Crewe was for the Tories. Expectation here in Edinburgh is that the election will take place next month, and will be a test as to whether Salmond can take a big a chunk out of Brown in the north as Cameron can in the south. Glasgow East is one of these places where life expectancy is closer to Bagdad than Kent. It is perhaps the most deprived and socialised constituency in Britain and probably Western Europe.  For Labour to lose this would be truly totemic. And there's more. You may remember reading in Ben Brogan's blog a while ago that the SNP was preparing for a by-election because a Scottish Labour MP was ill. Well, that was another MP who is still expected to stand down.

This is the third in our series of posts looking at where it all went wrong for Gordon Brown.  The first and second are here and here, respectively. Assessing Gordon Brown’s biggest mistake is like trying to name Elton John’s worst record. There are so many to choose from. But set aside the strategic blunders - like the bungled election - and you have what I think has proved his undoing: his reliance on dodgy statistics. We call them “Brownies” here in Coffee House – statistics produced using a variety of tactics. Sometimes exaggeration, other times simple concoction. But each of them undermines his best hope of success: portraying himself as a hardworking, no-spin man of the people.

The problem with charting Gordon Brown’s economic slowdown is that the phrase “record low” is not enough. Take today’s data from the British Bankers Association. Its mortgages approval was 27,968 in May – a record low. But the month before, 34,752 was also a record low. And March, at 36,788 was the lowest since 1997. All this matters because what Brown served up to us these last ten years was not prosperity. It was a a mirage, borrowed money, wealth that we didn’t own in the first place. Borrowed against made-up house prices, whose dizzying heights didn’t bother Brown as long as it sent stamp duty up by the same amount.

Unlike Iain Dale, I do believe Boris was right to accept the resignation of his political adviser James McGrath earlier this evening. Like Patrick Mercer, McGrath made a remark which could easily have been misrepresented as racist, even though it was not. Here are the specific words he used in an interview.   “McGrath was far from politically correct, David-Cameron-new- cuddly-Conservative Party, when I pointed out to him a critical comment of Voice columnist Darcus Howe that the election of “Boris Johnson, a right-wing Conservative, might just trigger off a mass exodus of older Caribbean migrants back to our homelands”. He retorted: “Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.

My, British politics is becoming litigious. First Shami Chakrabarti threatens to sue over “smears” about her and David Davis, and now David Cameron is talking about suing the Liberal Democrats over the contents of their Henley literature. There is an instinct to say ‘grow up, it’s only politics’ but its about time the Tories started getting muscular about the lies told about them. Gordon Brown lied his way through the 2005 election campaign, saying the Tories would make £35bn of “cuts”  when they (alas) promised not just to outspend Labour but to raise the tax burden too. If Brown repeated these claims in a document regulated by the London Stock Exchange he would go to jail.

A few months ago, I was told that David Davis had confessed at a dinner party that he didn’t believe the next Cameron government would be very Tory, and didn’t see the point in staying. I put this to both Mr Davis and a few of his friends. All laughed it off. Mr Davis said he was perhaps a little bored waiting for the 42 days vote, but not unhappy. (This, by the way, is typical of the way he’s played down any split with Cameron at every opportunity in private as well as public). One of his friends told me that it wasn’t so. “I’m not just saying this, I know David and would know if he genuinely felt that way,” I was told.

With four more troops dead in Afghanistan, the campaign in Helmand led PMQs. Gordon Brown wished to pay tribute, and I’m afraid it did not go well. “The freedoms that we have in Britain are in no small part due to the fact that we have taken on the Taleban in Afghanistan and refused them to allow to break the democracy of Afghanistan,” he said. Garbled nonsense: I agree that the cause in Afghanistan is noble but in what way are British freedoms “due” to the Afghan campaign? I’m not even sure what Brown was trying to say. Paying tribute to the military does not come naturally to him, as we all saw. Cameron looked almost sorry for Brown as he drowned in his own words. “I thank him for his reply,” he said before moving on to Europe.