It was a somewhat lacklustre PMQs before the Christmas holidays. There were bad jokes about turkeys and Cameron’s Christmas card list came in for some scrutiny, but there was not much cheer.

It was a tale of two countries, one in which David Cameron and his MPs live where unemployment is going down and growth going up, and a much nastier Britain which Labour MPs experience where wages are lower, jobs insecure, the cost of living higher and benefit sanctions harsh and cruel.

Tory MPs had all been specially primed before this PMQs to look up the employment data from their constituencies. Unemployment apparently is falling in Henley. Wow.
All is fine and dandy in Suffolk (no mention of the bad schools highlighted by Ofsted’s chief inspector Michael Wilshaw last week). And even in Peterborough more people are in work. There is the tricky question of youth unemployment in Peterborough. It’s still very high, I reckon because the prime minister couldn’t quote any optimistic figures.

Labour MPs painted a completely different picture, of falling wages, rising costs of living and tremendous hardship caused by benefit sanctions. There was a heartbreaking story from Clive Betts (Sheffield South-east) of a 15-year-old who came into school hungry on a Monday morning to school because she had not eaten all weekend. Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) talked of the ‘incompetence and random cruelty’ of benefit sanctions: one of his constituents had had their benefits cut because they had done work experience at the wrong branch of a charity. Derek Twigg (Halton) had the story of Cathy, a woman with cancer, who was suffering because of the incompetence of the government’s new disability assessments.

But back to the clash between David Cameron and Ed Miliband. It was another one where Cameron just reeled off lots of statistics about unemployment and growth, which, as Miliband pointed out, made him seem out of touch as the stats bear no resemblance to the reality of people’s lives. Cameron is, by the way, looking more and more like Steve Bell’s Guardian cartoon of him with the condom on his head. It was especially noticeable before PMQs started when he was sitting on the frontbench poring over his notes in a petulant fashion. Nick Clegg got a grumpy nod as he walked past to take his seat.

Miliband was good. He started first by saying rising employment was all very well but many of the jobs were part-time and people couldn’t get the work they needed.

Then Miliband hit home on the cost of living and rise in the price of things. It’s a variation on the ‘What is the cost of a pint of milk?’ question which journalists always like to ask. How much, asked Miliband, were electricity bills going up by? Cameron didn’t answer. Energy bills were £70 more this year on average and £300 more than when the government came to power. What about childcare costs? Again Cameron failed to answer. They went up by £300. And wages? Average wages were, Miliband pointed out, £364 lower than a year ago.

There was one group Miliband said that Cameron was protecting and that was his Christmas card list. He was, Miliband said, ‘A prime minister for the few and not the many’.

Cameron doesn’t respond well to this. It took him some time to remember to say that he wanted growth for everyone. He attacked Ed Balls as being a turkey. Mostly he is just trying to win the argument. He is so competitive about it that he tends to look callous.

The biggest sticky moment for Cameron was over Theresa Villiers, the former transport minister and now secretary of state for Northern Ireland, who had been sitting next to Cameron only a few weeks ago at PMQs looking miserable.

A story in the Sunday Times suggested that she had broken the ministerial code by having a private lunch with a lobbyist who was campaigning for a £400m rail depot in Hertfordshire. Anne Main, the Conservative MP for St Albans whose constituents are affected by the depot, filed a complaint and wanted at this PMQs  to know the upshot. Cameron said: ‘I’m sure she will get an answer’. Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree) asked specifically about the report and got the more promising reply that it would come out in the next few days.

So, on Christmas Day then.