Who won
Luke Akehurst: It depends whether the issues Cameron raised – particularly defence – are resonant with the public. He did rather well in harrying Brown on them but I suspect they will affect very few people’s votes. It really all comes down to the economy which is why Brown pounded away on that single message about endangering the recovery.
Rupa Huq: Brown all round for pointing out the danger of taking £6 billion from out of the economy. Cameron looked waspish, annoyed and annoying. When he described Paul Walsh head of Diageo (?) as one of Brown’s advisers he quipped “he’s probably a Tory now, so are half the country.” The answer demonstrates his questionable rounding processes and lack of grasp of figures. They haven’t even got 40 per cent in any recent poll let alone 50. Perhaps Eton’s maths department is not as top drawer as we thought.
He also didn’t appear to be listening to any response he got so when Brown answered the question on helicopters with “I accept full responsibility” the pre-prepared Cameron response was “there he goes, never accepts responsibility”.
Best comment
LA: Brown “We cannot cut our way out of recovery, but we could cut our way to double-dip recession”.
RH: “To think he was the future once” backed up with a list of achievements from the last 13 years.
Also in answer to the Wimbledon Tory MP’s question about Brown moving from safehouse to safehouse of staunch Labour-folk the line “they were safe once I’d finished with them” was very sharp.
Best backbencher
LA: Tom Clarke for raising the humanitarian disaster facing Sudan, rather than just using PMQs as a form of election hustings.
RH: Denis MacShane warning against “getting into bed and breakfast” with extremists, cleverly linking Europe and homophobia and highlighting Tory failings on both.
Last gasp of deselected Liverpool lefty Bob Wareing’s question on redistribution deftly replied with the line on tax credits.
Implications for the campaign
LA: It was all rather depressingly yah-boo stuff. The backbenchers acted like it was a zoo. I’m an off-the-scale political partisan and I found it all a turn-off. Ordinary voters must hate it. Hopefully the TV debates will provide a calmer and more informative forum for debating the future of the country. I thought Clegg looked lightweight and daft. He can’t do angry as effectively as Cameron. And Damian Green revealed the real Tory campaign behind the shiny happy Cameroons – the same old dog whistle raising of immigration and trying to link it to jobs as Michael Howard and Lynton Crosby tried in 2005. Grotesque, and very last decade.
RH: Set out dividing line – NI rise to be presented as a virtue. On the evidence of this, Cameron’s faux anger is going to come over really badly in the TV debates. How come his usual apoplectic act eludes him when it comes to the Cashcroft question talking of which… Cameron’s two questions were really the same thing. He refused to stick the knife into the tax-dodging non-dom Lord Ashcroft which makes me think that he is positioning himself for cosying up to the Tories if the election were to prove to be inconclusive. In short a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the Tories this election.
Cameron will be parading the anti-NI business leaders but big businesses support the Tories is hardly a novelty