PMQs sketch: An old-fashioned punch-up between Cameron and Miliband

Cameron, the king of the mood swings, was on typical form today. He veers between calmness and rage with alarming rapidity. The pattern is always the same. He deals reasonably with Miliband’s opening questions but the mercury starts to rise at around Question Four, and his temper reaches straitjacket level on Question Six.

He called Ed Miliband and Ed Balls ‘the two muppets’ for mismanaging the Royal Mail while in office. Their bungling cost the exchequer billions, he said. And they didn’t dare privatise the firm for fear of antagonising angry posties and union bosses.

Miliband accused Cameron of flogging the company cheap to enrich the Square Mile. At today’s valuation it might have raised an extra £1.4bn.

Cameron sounded a bit sheepish. ‘Shares are trading ahead of where they were sold,’ he conceded. And Miliband produced evidence of a capitalist plot. A cabal of favoured investors had made a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to retain their shares but they flogged them as soon as the price spiked.