The main subject of debate at today’s prime minister’s questions, which was actually deputy prime minister’s questions as David Cameron is still in China, was whether Nick Clegg had turned into a Tory.

Conservative Peter Bone (Wellingborough), the man who has introduced the brilliantly named prime minister (replacement) bill, said what we had all been thinking. ‘I think if you were listening on the radio you would think it was the right honourable member for Witney at the dispatch box. I think he is turning into a Tory.’

This was a ‘Tory Taliban’ attack, but it is true that Nick Clegg did sound a bit like a light-weight version of Cameron. Not as arrogant and relentess, but keen to show that he could hack it with the big boys. He was sitting beside George Osborne who still looks remarkably like Caligula with his new haircut. As if encouraged by this Clegg too was in pugilistic mode.

He used every excuse to repeat anti-Labour mantras which the Tories so love. He accused Labour of a bankruptcy of ideas and illiterate policy. At any moment you expected him to talk about mending the roof when the sun shone, but even he couldn’t bring himself to say that.

Despite the fact he was trying very hard, and even clenched his fists at one point – weak men should have learnt from Tim Henman that this doesn’t look good – he couldn’t command the House.

Harriet Harman who was facing Clegg over the dispatch box for Labour was, on the other hand, magnificent. She is a totally superior being. She had shadow ministers Rachel Reeves and Caroline Flint next to her and she was brave, as Harriet always is, in the face of the baying crowds of men. The speaker wearing a spectacularly flowery tie had to calm the Commons several times. The House, he repeated, should be a bastion of free speech.

But Harman debates properly rather than just throws insults. Her main line of attack was energy bills again. Would they be higher or lower after the government’s measures. Clegg would not answer. ‘Of the £50 can he tell us how much will come out of the profits of energy companies?’ And again, ‘They are tiptoeing round the energy giants allowing them to put up their bills.’ The government, she said was not standing up to rich and powerful. ‘But when it comes to hitting the most vulnerable in the land they have no qualms at all.’

And then she did what I wish would happen more often, because so many tendentious statements are made unchallenged at PMQs, and picked up a point Cameron had made the week before that the disabled would not be affected by the bedroom tax.  It was untrue, she said, would Clegg not apologise?

Clegg was in no mood even to acknowledge the question and came back to say that Labour did not stand up to vested interests like the trade unions.  That gave Harman the in her for best joke: ‘I suggest he leave it up to us to worry about our party members especially as so many of them used to be his!’

There was a European theme to today’s PMQ’s, kicked off by Clegg himself when  he used the expression ‘manana, manana, manana’ to accuse Labour of putting  off reforming the energy companies.  I can imagine the explosion if he ever tried that with his Spanish wife Miriam, but it was water off Harman’s back.

Europe though kept coming back to haunt him. It was an obvious attack line for pro-European Labour MPs, like Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) and for Tories who hate the LibDems and are anti-European.  But Charlie Kennedy used it too. Kennedy asked if you should not judge people by their actions, rather then their words, and elaborated all the ‘pro-European’ things he thought that various Tory ministers of state were doing. It was gross mischievousness as Clegg pointed out.

It was certainly on Europe that Clegg sounded least like the Tories, or rather like a wet old-fashioned Tory. He had calmed his troops on energy bills and the abolition of green taxes, as they didn’t dare ask about that.  He was toeing the government line on the NHS and accusing Labour, rather bizarrely, of talking it down. He is vulnerable from friends and coalition partners as well as enemies. He looks and sounds more and more like a Conservative and that is why LibDems are coming over to Labour. He is at his most vulnerable at deputy prime minister’s questions because he is forced to speak for the government.