The Tories looked in triumphal mood at prime minister’s questions today. Unemployment is going down. The number of Romanians and Bulgarians looking for jobs in the United Kingdom has fallen since they were allowed to come and work freely in the country. And the opinion polls show the Tories and Labour neck and neck a year out from the general election. Reports are also rife that Tory MPs have decided to stop sniping at each other.

Labour can only hope that the Tories have peaked too soon, or that George ‘Caligula’ Osborne will overplay his hand. He was sitting forward on the frontbench today looking like he might do just that, laughing and joking across the chamber and encouraging all the ministers sitting beside him – even the often dour international development secretary Justine Greening – to join in the fun. They behaved like obnoxious English public schoolchildren. Andrew Lansley, sitting on the other side of David Cameron in a bright green tie, nodding sagely in full golf club bore mode.

And Cameron was cheerleading for them all – by turns overbearingly smug, bullying and arrogant. His face was shining with glee. It was the establishment in full cry, and it was an unpleasant sight.

The big question is still what kind of a recovery this is and for whom. Is it just for the rich? That is certainly how it felt at PMQs today – and there was no attempt by the Tories to suggest it was for anyone else.

Ed Miliband questioned Cameron on Pfizer’s attempted takeover of AstraZeneca. Cameron is weak on this. And all he could say about his behaviour was that he had got stuck in while Miliband had been off canvassing. Miliband was having none of this – and best line on this was: ‘Pfizer doesn’t need a PR man, they’ve got the prime minister’.

It is an issue Labour has championed well. Cameron was unable to answer any question about whether the current research and development jobs would be guaranteed.

Cameron’s only defence was to attack. He even tried to blame Miliband for getting rid of the public interest test when he was at the Treasury more than 10 years ago.

Nye Bevan said that Toryism was organised spivvery and that was exactly what it looked like today. In vain did Miliband point out that there were 20,000 jobs at stake and two per cent of British exports. Cameron wasn’t listening.

Kevan Brennan (Cardiff West) took up the cudgel later saying that Pfizer had given assurances that research and development would fall and that jobs would fall – Cameron just dismissed him as not having properly understood.

Mark Hendrick (Preston) had a go over thousands of ambulances waiting in queues outside hospitals.

Cameron’s reply was that there were 1.2 million more people going to Accident and Emergency and they were being seen on target.

It is a slick answer but not one to stand up to scrutiny: first, the A&E departments are meeting targets because they are leaving patients in ambulances outside. Second, is 1.2 million more people going to A&E really something to boast about? And, third, what happens if you have a serious heart attack or an accident – will there be an ambulance to come out?

But PMQs is not a place to ask these questions and Cameron rolls on regardless. Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) also in vain pointed out the jobs which have been created are low-paid jobs on zero-hours contracts that ‘don’t pay enough to pay the rent.’

And that, he said, means the housing benefit bill had gone up by 61 per cent, costing, as another Labour MP pointed out,  £5bn a year.

Cameron just kept repeating that unemployment was going down.

The public school Tory bandwagon was on a depressing roll today in parliament. Labour’s task over the next year will be to turn it into a tumbril.

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Sally Gimson is a journalist, a Labour councillor, and reviews PMQs on Progress