Fraser Nelson

In India, Brown was full of beans – boasting at one stage that he’d outlasted Dame Kelly Holmes who had to retire to her hotel. He should have saved his energy. He looked exhausted at PMQs today. Until Cameron piped up on Northern Rock, that was. Then he sprang to life and put up a hell of a fight. Much rests on whether Cameron can make Northern Rock stick. Brown is like a used car salesman – “he’s gone from Prudence to Del Boy without even touching the ground” (sure I’ve heard that before). “It’s a sub-prime deal from a sub-Prime minister”. Good. Ditto the line on liquidisation. But he didn’t get Brown on the ropes. Brown now has two strategies for Cameron at PMQs.

Have a look at the stock market today, then the housing market, and then ask what kind of idiot would try to flog a mortgage bank like Northern Rock right now? Brown and Darling are fast becoming the Del Boy and Rodney of British politics – churning out dodgy figures, mesmerised by their own little scams and then getting fleeced when they engage in the real market and try to do deals with real business people (remember that gold sale?). The truly terrifying thing is it’s our money – about £60bn of it - bundled in the back of their Robin Reliant as they head off to see a man about a dog and a bank. At 11.30am the FTSE100 is down a bloody 3.6% but there’s one exception. Northern Rock is up a gravity-defying 35%.

William Hague was on Steve Richards' GMTV show at 6am this morning (amazing what baby care does to your viewing habits) and asked The Question ahead of tomorrow's debate: what would a Tory government do about a ratified EU Reform Treaty/constitution? He answered in almost the exact same words Cameron used on Marr last week. "In our view too much power would have been transferred from Westminster to Brussels, that it would lack democratic legitimacy for the reasons we have discussed, and that we would not let matters rest there and that is a position that Conservative MPs, as far as I can see, are very, very supportive of." The Tory problem is that there is little agreement on what, precisely, should be done. The EU offers no reverse mechanism.

Brown’s been in China only a few hours and already I can’t take any more. Unable to match Blair’s slick statesman act, he gabbles on like an over-promoted finance minister – regurgitating the same type of statistic-riddled declarations he gave as Chancellor.  His “response” to China is to lay out his own central targets, committing to treble trade to £30bn, we’re told. Come again? Brown has 20 business leaders with him on the trip. One should take him aside and quietly explain that Britain is a free economy – so its trading preferences are outside his control. He is a mere spectator in what is a mutually-beneficial relationship between the British people and Chinese people – trading through the businesses they form and use.

Great fireworks today over Northern Rock. Cameron started with sombre questions about taxpayers’ money involved - Can Brown guarantee the safe return of the taxpayers’ money given Northern Rock? Was he advised the liability could rise so high? Could it rise higher than £55bn? No answer. Brown tried his trick of last week of asking Cameron a question so often that Michael Martin intervened. “He doesn’t have to answer the Prime Minister’s question,” says Michael Martin. Not until the next general election, at any rate.   Then for Cameron’s coup de theatre. “I’ll tell you what you did. When it came to the need for a total guarantee of deposits, you dithered and delayed.

About the only thing we learned at his press conference today is that David Cameron  has mastered the art of not answering awkward questions. He dodged several this morning, but in a way that sounded as if he had given answers.   Nick Robinson asked it first. Why didn't George Osborne personally declare to parliament the cash raised for the party in his name? Cameron said the registrar had given him "unclear" advice - but we knew that as he told Marr this yesterday. Nick asked why Cameron had not decided “if in doubt, publish and be damned”. No direct answer. He was later asked why Osborne sought advice about these donations just a few weeks ago – no clear answer.

Is Gordon Brown running for the world record on the number of times a story is announced? His “revelation” that Britain will continue with nuclear power is something this government announces almost on a quarterly basis, to show how it is taking tough decisions. No serious policy analyst ever thought Britain would go nuclear-free – and ministers would say so in private, promoting various stories over the years. Blair started to detail the agreement in private briefings around the 2005 Labour conference – which I wrote up in October 2005. A cursory cuts check shows this story in The Times in both November of that year and May 2006 and both Brown and Darling announced it back in July. And today’s news is?