PMQs live blog | 15 June 2011

VERDICT: The specifics of today’s exchange between David Cameron and Ed Miliband may have everyone rushing for this Macmillan press release, but the rhetorical positions were clear enough. There was the Labour leader, angrier and more indignant than usual, painting the government’s welfare reforms as cruel and insufficiently thought-through. And there was the PM, painting his opponent as yet another roadblock to reform. Neither really triumphed, although their battle will most likely set a template for in future. The coalition has extensive public backing for its changes to the welfare system. So, Miliband’s challenge is to attack certain aspects of them, without making Labour appear to be — as he put it on Monday — “the party of those ripping off our society”. I shall leave CoffeeHousers to decide whether he’s up to it.

1234: To close, Cameron defends the coalition’s deficit reduction plan. It is, he suggests, thanks to that plan that the country has been able to sustain “Greek [i.e.