PMQs Verdict: Ed Miliband destroyed Cameron utterly and completely

I’ve written in the past about my concerns with Ed Miliband’s style at PMQs. I’ve agonised about his unwillingness to drive a point home, his choice of subject matter and his seeming unwillingness to deliver a knockout blow.

But I couldn’t find fault with his performance at PMQs today. It was utterly devastating. The subject – energy prices – showed Cameron’s weakness and lack of preparation. As Miliband jackhammered again and again against the same festering sore, it became increasing clear that Cameron had no answer to the question of soaring energy prices.

And then, like a brainwave, on the spot, it came to the Prime Minister – he’d pledge to get rid of green taxes.

That’s right – the man who said he’d lead the “Greenest Government ever”, who hugged huskies and said that people should “Vote Blue to Go Green” has just pledged, seemingly with no consultation, to abolish energy taxes. That’s despite the fact that the Lib Dems – whose votes he will need – are opposed to removing energy taxes, that they are responsible for only a small proportion of price rises and that Cameron said (just a month ago) that green taxes were “necessary”.

So apart from the fact that it’s make little difference, it’s a hypocritical u-turn and it won’t happen, what made Cameron think this was a good idea? Not for nothing did Tory MP Zac Goldsmith call the Prime Minister a muppet…

If this was the best Miliband has been at PMQs (which it was) then it was also quite possibly Cameron’s worst performance in the chamber. The two combined with utterly devastating effect, each Miliband missile (short, direct, to the point, wounding) received a waffling response, long on words but short on answers. It was like watching a dreadful team get thumped and have no response but to stand up and get thumped again (and Cameron couldn’t even get standing up right, like a woozy boxer he stood mid-battering from Miliband at one point to the amusement of the Labour backbencher, and few on the Tory benches too). I assume this is what supporting one of the teams that have beaten (my team) Sunderland this season felt like. An utterly abject performance.

The cherry on Cameron’s turd of a day was delivered by the Speaker, when he pulled Cameron up for referring to Ed Miliband as a “conman” – again on energy – noting that such language was unparliamentary. Cameron looked completely and utterly bereft, like he was already desperate to escape from the noise and the closeness of the chamber.

Yet at the end of the session, for the first time, he pulled himself together, drawing himself up to his full height to deliver what he hoped would be a rousing curtain closer. When asked about Lynton Crosby’s involvement in government, he retorted that the Australian’s job was to deliver “the destruction of the Labour Party”. The line got a miserable and tired cheer from the Tory benches, but it was a laughable note on which to end.

There was only one party that got destroyed, taken apart and gutted today – and it wasn’t the Labour Party.