Who won?

Luke Akehurst: Difficult to judge when Brown was playing cricket and Cameron was playing rugby. Cameron lost his temper when he was barracked by Labour backbenchers. If he does that in the TV election debates it will be a disaster for him. Brown’s more statesmanlike style today will work well in the election debates.

Will Parbury: For a PMQ’s shortly before a general election this was not a very partisan, concentrating most on defence issues and particularly Afghanistan.

Cameron fired his best shot on the former Chiefs of Defence Staff contradicting the PM’s evidence to the Chilcot inquiry but blew it when he claimed that he won the cold war. Brown’s reliance on saying he has kept increasing defence spending blunts Tory attacks but this will come up in the TV debates and he needs a better narrative then.

John Robertson’s questions about the carriers, a cornerstone for British defence for the next 40 years, and Tory refusal to support this speaks volumes. Brown ground out a victory but there was blood drawn on both sides. Clegg was forgettable.

Rachel Reeves: Gordon Brown tried to secure the moral high-ground by ‘looking for common ground’. However, subsequent questioning from Tory backbench on equipment for troops is still uncomfortable ground for the Government – especially in the adversarial environment of PMQs where a balance needs to be struck between showing respect to the soldiers killed in conflict (which GB did do on Friday) and making a strong case for Government policy in contrast to opposition approach.

Nick Clegg’s focus on crime and prisons seems to be a strange emphasis for a party which is generally seen as soft on crime – opposing CCTV and DNA database, being luke-warm on measures to tackle ASB and vociferously arguing that prisoners should be able to vote. It would have been more fruitful to concentrate on the economy where Cable has given the Libs some credibility or Iraq where the Libs opposed military intervention, unlike Cameron. No one is going to vote Lib Dem because of their approach on crime and anti-social behavior, so why draw attention to policies that will not be popular?

Best backbencher:

LA: Tory backbencher Richard Benyon for his topical and practical question about the postal voting rights of the armed forces in Afghanistan. A good non-partisan question about an important issue.

WP: Richard Benyon’s question at the start about protecting the rights of service personnel to vote wasn’t partisan but was important. PMQ’s would do well if more backbenchers asked such questions.

Best comment/joke:

WP: This was clearly Brown’s reply that David Cameron was still at school when the cold war was won. A textbook slapdown that proves it no time for a novice. This has potential to run and run, certainly more than Cameron doing his hair on camera.

LA: The Speaker’s savage put down of Tory whip Simon Burns – “your heckling is as boring as it is boorish”.

Impact on the campaign:

WP: I don’t think this PMQ’s is going to have a major effect on the forthcoming General Election result, which in my view will be decided on economic issues which didn’t get much of a mention apart from Labour By election victor Willie Bain. The war in Afghanistan will be a major part of the TV debates and Cameron will try shamelessly to tag Gordon with not protecting our soldiers. Gordon needs to expose Tory duplicity on this. What is their alternative strategy? How are they going to spend more on defence when they are itching to cut the military budget?

LA: The Tories are clearly scared to tackle the key issue for ordinary voters of the economy, because their hardline stance on public spending has terrified middle England and is behind their conversion of a 26% lead into a 2% one.

They think they are onto something regarding defence equipment spending but their citing of former defence chiefs has been undermined by General Dannatt outing himself as a Tory last year; and the issue is far too serious for Cameron’s aggressively partisan style to be appropriate. His remarks about CND and the Cold War were particularly cheap and, as the PM said, “juvenile” given he had only just paid tribute to Michael Foot.

RR: Yet more evidence, if we needed any, that Lord Ashcroft will be a major part of the election debate until polling day. Labour tried to keep the pressure on Cameron after Mandelson’s excellent attack in the Guardian on Monday and after Harriet Harman and Vince Cable failed to make sufficient capital on it last week. The Ashcroft affair has left a bad taste in the mouth, on the tax exile’s influence over the Tory Party and also on Cameron’s judgement.

Photo: UK Parliament 2008