PMQs Sketch: A bemused Corbyn struggles against Cameron’s mockery

Corbyn had an open goal at PMQs. Cameron is weaker than he’s ever been. His favoured successor is toast. His party are restive and mutinous. Three months from now the retirement committee may gather around the PM with tense smiles and whetted blades. All Corbo had to do was kick straight. But asking the Labour leader to bang the ball into an undefended net is like asking a fish to sing ‘Heroes’. Up he got, looking a little bemused, like an elderly patient called unexpectedly to his hearing-aid appointment, and he set about his flat-battery attack.

It hardly helped that he’d been greeted by a tinkling silence from his own side. Labour members had spent the morning absorbing the bad news about their boss. Instead of preparing to nail the Tories over their self-imposed budget disaster, Corbyn and his team have been busy spying on their colleagues. It has, of course, been officially denied that the Labour thought-police have compiled a secret list of MPs and assigned them grades according to their fealty to the leader.