Miliband snipes, Cameron deflects, Bercow bobs

Let’s be honest. I shouldn’t say this but I can’t help it. I’m fed up. The NHS reform process has been dragging on for months, and still there’s no end in sight. Ed Miliband brought it up at PMQs for the third week running.

The position remains the same. Miliband loves it. Cameron lives with it. The PM claimed that 8,200 GP practices are now practising his reforms and the Labour leader replied with a list of professional bodies — nurses, doctors, midwives, radiologists — who oppose them. And that’s exactly the trouble, for me, at least. If the issue were a race-horse some crazy campaigner would plunge beneath its thundering hooves. But it’s not. It’s a set of abbreviations. It’s a lot of indignant medics writing narky letters to newspapers. It’s one series of acronyms being replaced by another. Here’s what I mean. Let’s try a snippet — just a short one, I promise — from today’s debate.