The energy price freeze is becoming the new 50p tax

David Cameron clearly didn’t think he’d had a good PMQs by the time he’d finished with Ed Miliband. There was something irritable and tired about the Prime Minister as he took questions from backbenchers, and that weariness was compounded by the sight of Dennis Skinner limbering to his feet to deliver a long, angry and moving question about the work capability assessment. Dennis Skinner is the last thing you want floating to the top when your PMQs performance has been below par.

And it was below par. I understand that Cameron was given a very detailed briefing indeed today on energy prices because it was highly likely that Ed Miliband was going to come back for round two. As James says, the session is settling into a pattern. Part of that pattern seems to be Cameron mis-firing a little bit. He fixated on the idea that this was a ‘price con’ (and behind him, an even more exhausted-looking Nick Clegg repeated ‘con’ in an attempt to underline the point which just looked a bit eerie).