COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL

For a man who is learning the truth of the old saying that, in the Commons, your opponents sit opposite you and your enemies behind you,  Gordon Brown appeared remarkably un-threatened. No wonder David Cameron suggested he was in denial.

As one Tory aide declared after the event: “It dawned on me half way through that this might just be the last question time he ever does.”

The same thought had struck any number of the hacks and MPs watching this extraordinary clash.

The Tory leader was almost banging his head against the despatch box in frustration at his inability to make the Prime Minister see what, he believed, everyone and his dog could see. That the game is up. It’s all over. The prime minister has one foot through the “out” door.

There came a time in Tony Blair’s premiership when he stopped trying to be loved and appeared to almost relish being hated, facing down all his critics with the air of a man who simply could not understand their stupidity for not understanding what he was saying because it was so patently correct and un-contestable.

Perhaps Mr Brown has entered a similar psychological state. Or maybe he genuinely doesn’t get it.

Either way, the Prime Minister showed absolutely no sign that he was finished. Except perhaps for the praise he offered to Hazel Blears – glowing but perhaps a fatal few weeks too late.

So, what we got were parallel universe question times. One was David Cameron’s  and was all about the disintegrating government and his attempts to hammer a few more nails into the Prime Minister’s coffin.

The other universe had the Prime Minister ploughing on with his usual lines of attack about the policy-free Tory party that has stood against every initiative he has launched to save the world from economic disaster.

He even tried the old trick of suggesting many of the problems bufetting him and his government were shared by the opposition parties and that it was somehow tasteless for David Cameron to attempt to make political capital out of the expenses scandal.

And then there was Nick Clogg, who stuck it to the prime minister good and proper – until he blew it all by suggesting there were only two alternatives to the government, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

The gales of laughter that engulfed him at least punctured the otherwise fractious atmosphere.