A buoyant Cameron gives Brown a PMQs kicking

Today’s PMQs was both tedious and fascinating. Dave marched in with a two-pronged strategy. To force the PM to call the recession ‘a bust’ and accept personal responsibility for it. He knew Gordon would refuse to make either admission so he had a statistical counter-attack up his sleeve. He quoted the definition of an economic bust given by Gordon to a select committee last year. ‘A reduction in GDP of one and a half percent.’ So would the PM concede that our economy was due to shrink by that amount, or more, this year? Would he hell. Brown loves spewing out statistics but hates it when they’re flung back at him and he deployed his pre-arranged rhetorical defence. The problem is global, his policies are leading the world out of the crisis while the Tories’ plan is – yawn – to do nothing. Growing incensed, Dave forgot Commons protocol. ‘You didn’t abolish boom and bust did you,’ he said, earning a rebuke from the Speaker for his unparliamentary use of the second person.