Tornado in the chamber

It was like a volcano going off. At PMQs today Cameron was calmly dissecting the prime minister’s underfunding of the Afghan war when he quoted two former defence chiefs who’d called Brown ‘disingenuous’ and ‘a dissembler’. Then someone shouted, ‘they’re Tories!’ Cameron lost control. Instantly, completely. His temper just went. White in the face, he leaned his flexed torso across the dispatch box, hammering at it so hard that it nearly disintegrated. ‘Is that it?’ he yelled. ‘Is that what this tribalist and divisive government thinks of those who serve this country!?’

Rippling with anger he demanded that the PM dissociate himself from his backbenchers’ smears. Brown stood up, in a pointedly indolent fashion, and made a plea for consensus. ‘Let’s find where the common ground is rather than division.’ Cameron wasn’t having that. He was still in mid-fit. ‘His MPs,’ he bellowed, still trying to jab a hole in the dispatch box, ‘his MPs have questioned the integrity of people who are essays in bravery.