Brown faces the brickbats in PMQs<br />

Impressions, rather than substance, dominated today’s PMQs. With the Brown premiership downgraded from stable to critical over the weekend, this could have been a career-terminating ordeal for the soggy-eyed old panda but he got through it pretty well. By the end he was still confidently afloat, if not quite buoyant.

Cameron raised the question of Brown’s authority. Brown counter-attacked. Why didn’t Cameron ask about policy rather than reducing everything ‘to personality’? Cameron insisted that Brown himself was the issue. Quoting long and embarrassing chunks from Hazel Blears’s weekend tirade he asked, ‘Why’s she still in the cabinet? His government simply cannot go on.’ The PM accused the Tories of being unable to tackle big decisions, and Cameron hit back with a list of recent judgments revised by Downing Street. On they went, pinging the ball to and fro. Brown argued that Cameron had reneged on his vow to stick to Labour spending plans.