Is Ed becoming a shark?

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Last week Ed Miliband was poor. He needed a good performance and that was lacking. This week the pressure was, if possible, greater. Better wouldn’t do. Better would be too easy. What Ed needed was good. Thank god that’s what we got today.

Obviously emboldened by his well received speech on Monday, Miliband lept towards the dispatch box with more energy and spark that we’re used to seeing from the opposition leader. Was there also a glint in those big round eyes? Perhaps.

Miliband started with a technical question. Did the Prime Minister realise that his welfare reforms will cost some cancer patients up to £94 per week? Jeering rose from the government benches, denial from the lips of the Prime Minister.

Again Miliband asked him the question – this time putting him on a collision course with Macmillan Cancer Care – not an adversary any PM would relish. Cameron ducked, weaved and bobbed, but Miliband doggedly stuck to his task, like a boxer who has no thundering right hook, and so keeps on methodically throwing the same left hand jab. It’s not a tactic that always works, but Ed got a modicum of success from it today. Cameron looked fed up every time he was forced to stand up and face the same question, each time trying to tackle it in a different way. Except (and perhaps this is his greatest failing), he couldn’t answer the question convincingly – because he doesn’t know the detail of his own policy. And if there’s one thing Ed Miliband is, he’s a details man.

More than that though, he showed that he has some fire in his belly today. At one point Miliband looked so furious with the Prime Minister for not taking the suffering of cancer patients seriously he looked like he was about to grab ahold of Cameron by his lapels. Delivering a slapdown to the raucous Tory benches sent an audible ripple of pleasure through the Labour benches. Their pathetic taunts only served to show what an important issue this is. Cameron can call it a smokescreen if he likes – but that’s a phrase that will haunt him later.

There will be much ink-spilled over the coming days on whether Ed Miliband is “back”. In reality it’s far too early to speculate. He’s still not the finished article yet. But today, he looked like a shark again, scenting blood and relentlessly pounding the PM on his weak spot. He was angry without abandoning his thoughtful nature, he was confident without being brash. He wasn’t great, but he was certainly good.

Cuts for cancer patients will lead the news today, and the Prime Minister will be going head to head with a cancer charity. And whilst Ed Miliband still has much work to do, he’ll know that for the first time in weeks, he has put Cameron under pressure.

He just needs to do this another hundred or so times before the next election now, that’s all…