Lloyd Evans

Cameron was scarcely trying at PMQs today. Show up, look a bit cross, slip in a joke or two, then sit down and wait for the Budget. That was his plan. When the PM offered his congratulations on BabyCam, the opposition leader quoted a text he’d received – ‘How do you find time for these things?’ Making this wisecrack seemed more important to him than attacking the PM. His tactics were odd, out of touch, retrospective. He asked about Brown’s attempts to conceal the evidence that, as chancellor, he flogged the nation’s gold too cheaply and blew vast sums in potential profits. Brown’s bungling over the bullion billions should be a promising issue.

He did it. We saw him. It actually happened.  History was made at PMQs today as Gordon Brown finally gave a direct answer to a direct question. Not only that, he admitted he'd been wrong about something. Tony Baldry (Con, Banbury) informed the PM that his assertion before the Chilcot Inquiry that defence spending has risen, in real terms, every year has been contradicted by figures released to the Commons library. Up got Brown, looking like a wounded old teddy-bear, and offered this epoch-making concession. 'I accept that in one or two years real terms spending did not rise.'   What a union of opposites. Brown and the truth. It was alarming, almost unnatural, to witness. Like Santa in a scuba suit or the Pope playing pinball.

It was like a volcano going off. At PMQs today Cameron was calmly dissecting the prime minister’s underfunding of the Afghan war when he quoted two former defence chiefs who’d called Brown ‘disingenuous’ and ‘a dissembler’. Then someone shouted, ‘they’re Tories!’ Cameron lost control. Instantly, completely. His temper just went. White in the face, he leaned his flexed torso across the dispatch box, hammering at it so hard that it nearly disintegrated. ‘Is that it?’ he yelled. ‘Is that what this tribalist and divisive government thinks of those who serve this country!?’ Rippling with anger he demanded that the PM dissociate himself from his backbenchers’ smears.

Brown bunked off PMQs today, claiming a prior luncheon engagement with President Zuma of South Africa. Downing Street blamed the Queen for double-booking the PM. Can that be true? The head of state deprives the Commons of its democratic right to shout ‘Answer the question’ at a block of granite. Perhaps she had their best interests at heart. Hattie Harman, replacing the PM, turned up in a pair of alarmingly shrill pink glasses. Opposite her, William Hague wore a sober suit of inky blue. He looked ominously business-like as he aimed his first shot at her. Why had Brown cut the helicopter budget while the country was fighting two wars? This sent Hattie scampering to her dressing-up box of muddled phrases.

‘Any closer and they’ll start kissing,’ said Cameron. The PM and his beloved chancellor were seated side by side at PMQs today, chatting showily throughout. Their rhubarb-rhubarb conversation was intended to quell the rumours of civil war in Downing Street. The ploy misfired. Two men conversing don’t both speak at each other simultaneously. But that scarcely mattered. The session was the rowdiest and least illuminating of the year so far. At times it was noisier than the Pamplona bull-run. Cameron began by trying to elicit answers about the appalling mortality rates at Staffordshire Hospital. Brown adopted his cenotaph grimace and reeled off a list of inquiries, investigations and disciplinary sanctions which parked the issue in neutral territory.

The Tory graveyard poster – brilliant and shocking – cast a long shadow over PMQs today. The debate itself came down to fine judgements about the validity of the leaders’ arguments. Cameron demanded to know if Brown planned to introduce this grim levy or not. He quoted acidic comments from senior Labour figures who’ve called the tax ‘a cruel deception’, ‘badly costed’ and ‘poorly constructed.’ Brown’s response, which seems reasonable, is that the Conservatives ‘voted for this in the House and now they’re refusing to help us to give local authorities the resources they need.

Dave bounced back today. After a couple of lost months he showed up at PMQs and gave a thoroughly convincing display. Shrewd tactics, sound principles, headline-friendly quotes and some decent gags. The Chilcot Inquiry is proving a handy prosecution witness in the case against Brown. Cameron quoted a fistful of top generals who believe the former chancellor was a serial under-funder of the military. Brown’s response was a classic example of bluster and confusion. Good arguments arrive singly. Bad arguments enter in rowdy swarms. He gave five different replies to the main charge: the 2002 defence review had been the best in 20 years; fourteen billion pounds has been spent on Iraq: the rising defence budget would rise even further; the Tory manifesto in 2005 promised a £1.