PMQs

PMQs showed there isn't going to be much talk from voters about not being able to tell the difference between the main parties come the next election.

It's quite astonishing just how wedded to laissez faire the Tories have suddenly become, when the response to the downturn is broadly bipartisan in almost every other country.

This isn't quibbling about the details, they seem to have rejected any attempt to reflate the economy, beyond a gimmicky Council Tax freeze - rather meaningless when Labour Councils like my one in Hackney have frozen the Council Tax for several years running, and as Siobhain McDonagh has just told the PM, Labour Groups in places like Merton are proposing a £100 cut to their local Council Tax.

It was good to see the PM remind people of Cameron's experience in Government as Special Adviser to Lamont in the early '90s, when his "special advice" included raising VAT and trying to raise VAT on fuel to 17.5%.

Cameron was as usual polished and well-scripted but lapsed into petulance with his childish and patently daft comment that Brown should "do something useful".

Rather better was Brown's dismissal "I'm sorry I have to give him an economics lecture every week".

Cameron's mantra is now to repeatedly use the phrase "bombshell". This worked in 1992 because Labour was in opposition and no one knew what they would do in power. It won't work this time because by the time the election is fought, the PBR decisions will actually be felt in people's pockets and won't have been a "bombshell" - they will have helped people. By constantly saying "bombshell", Cameron is acting like the boy who cried wolf.