Brown finally wins a round

I normally review PMQs from the chamber, and conclude Brown has bombed. So I tried a TV view for a bit of balance. Labour does looks better from this vantage point. In the gallery, you can compare the volume of roars (Tories far better) and see every face (Labour glum, Tories exuberant). But on TV you can just see a broad panorama of the chamber, and only the faces in the camera “donut” – who look lively, under instruction from the whips. For the first time, Brown came armed with figures, attack lines and put downs and knew when to use them. I’d actually say that Brown won.
 
It is simply outrageous that Brown is using the Hayden Philips party funding inquiry to defend himself from Labour’s failure to obey the current campaigning law. But Brown got away with it. “If the Conservative Party want to play their party in sorting our politics for the future they should adopt the policies we are putting forward,” he told Greg Hands (who brilliantly asked if the police investigations were what Brown had in mind when he called himself a ‘conviction politician’).