COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL

You could almost see the frustration bursting out over Gordon Brown like a rash.

Here he was facing David Cameron and armed with a whole series of put downs over the Tories’ recent wobbles over tax and spending, abandoned policies and a slide in the opinion polls.

But the dastardly opposition leader wasn’t giving him an opening. In fact Cameron was on the front foot over Brown’s alleged refusal to properly kit out our troops and, even better, Brown’s sudden conversion to AV voting.

Still, the Prime Minister pressed ahead and delivered his best-prepared line anyway.

“It’s eight minutes past 12,” he said, looking at his watch, “and I gather the current Conservative party policy …..”

It raised a good laugh, but you couldn’t help feeling this was part of a longer script that he wasn’t being allowed to read. And it all seemed to throw him.

Cameron, on the other hand, appeared to have found his stride again. His own backbenchers must have been fearing another Brown onslaught of the type that have flattened their leader of late.

But Cameron’s choice of subjects cheered them up no end.

Mrs Merton once famously asked Debbie McGee what it was that first attracted her to multi-millionaire Paul Daniels.

Cameron asked Brown what it was, weeks away from an election, that attracted him to a change in the voting system.

And, when the Prime Minister told him it was what voters wanted as party of the campaign to clean up politics, Cameron virtually burst out laughing. “It’s back to the bunker time. What a lot of rubbish,” he declared.

Brown had inherited his leadership without an election, bottled an earlier general election and was now trying to do deals over the next election, he said.

As if to prove the point, Gordon Brown then said nice things to Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg about his policy consistency.

A smattering of Labour backbenchers tossed Brown soft balls to allow him to get one or two of his prepared lines out, but they didn’t have the impact he might have hoped for.

Perhaps this will herald a return of the old grumpy Gordon who has gone missing of late.

There may be a few more setbacks along the way, but it appears the Palace of Westminster  is finally to get a creche.

Read the full story at ePolitix.com

Watching today’s question time was a little like choosing to go to the Muppet Movie when Frost/Nixon was showing just down the road.

No offence intended to either Harriet Harman or William Hague, but a B-team PMQs was never going to have the draw of the Iraq inquiry’s probing of former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.

But, with impeccable timing, just as Goldsmith was explaining in the most lawyerly language why he changed his mind over the legality of the war, it was over to the Commons chamber.

And over there, it was a pretty tedious clash over the economy with the deputy Tory leader demanding Obama-style policies over the banks and the deputy Labour leader telling him to forget it.

An interesting bit of political cross-dressing.

Sadly, these two have entirely abandoned their old habit of poking fun at each other which occasionally lit up their exchanges. Probably because, while we all enjoyed it, they were pretty evenly matched, and a score draw is not what backbenchers want.

Liberal Democrat stand-in Vince Cable sought to embarrass Harman over the findings of her own pet project, the National Equality Panel, which suggested inequality had worsened under Labour.

Oh no it hasn’t, she said, adding that his party’s plans for “savage” spending cuts would make things even worse.

Things livened up a little when Tory David Jones reminded us that Lord Mandelson had once said he was happy with people becoming filthy rich under Labour, and asked if that applied to former PM Tony Blair.

Harman ducked, but prompted laughter when she said she was all in favour of social mobility – although Blair’s social mobility is probably not what she meant.

She was equally unwilling to engage with the question of whether she had regrets over her part in the decision to send Britain to war on Iraq.

Let’s wait for the outcome of the Chilcot inquiry, she said.

Just another reminder that the real show was not here but 100 yards over the road at the QE2 centre where Lord Goldsmith was, presumably, refusing to hand over a smoking gun.

More evidence of the dramatic change in  Gordon Brown’s demeanour came at this morning’s press conference.

The prime minister was asked if he could put us all out of our misery by confirming what Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth appeared to have blurted out, that election day is May 6.

What Ainsworth had actually done, claimed Brown, was to warn voters of the consequences of waking up the day after May 6 to find the Conservatives were in power – in local councils.

And, along with everyone else at the press conference, he laughed out loud when he said it.

The old Brown would have said it with a straight face,  as though he actually believed it and, worse still, expected us to believe it as well.

Meanwhile, the guessing game of whether Ainsworth did indeed blurt out the date,  or was actually attempting to wrong foot the opposition parties, moves into full, pointless swing.

Only two things are certain. There will be an election at some point before June 3 – and local council election day on May 6, is as good a date as any.  And the opposition parties are not about to fall for any tricks or teases, they are already in full campaigning mode, just like Brown.