Brown survives PMQs

I had thought it impossible to pay tribute to our servicemen in a more garbled way than Brown did last week. But Khalid Mahmood proved me wrong. He stuttered, gasped, looked at his papers. How difficult can it be to ask one question? When he sat down, I thought he’d be mortified. But he smiled broadly, and a mischievous thought struck me. Was his job to sound so breathtakingly incoherent that Gordon Brown sounds fluent?

Perhaps his trick worked, because Brown came across better than we’re used to. And Cameron was not quite as good as normal, going on strikes. Brown asks what the Tory position is on reopening pay deals (left in confusion after one of Hammond’s gaffes). Call an election if you want to ask questions, Cameron replied. He’d best be careful, its a good line and loses its impact if deployed too many times.