PMQs Verdict: Flat, flat flat

Ed Miliband and David Cameron both spoke in the Commons on Monday to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. They both then jumped on a flight to South Africa to attend his memorial service yesterday (selfies included) before flying back to do PMQs today.

To be honest this might have been more enlightening if they’d dialed it in front South Africa, because they largely dialed it in from Westminster.

This was flat, flat, flat. This was the least energetic PMQs I can remember in quite some time. This was turgid. This was tired – or at least the two men at the centre of it were. Usually PMQs takes hours of preparation and will suck the energy out of the early part of a leader’s week. This week there won’t have been time for any of that preparation, and unfortuately that showed.

Ed Miliband led on what he must have assumed would be solid ground – MPs pay. Cameron and his team had been a bit cagey about this over the past few days (perhaps fearing the wrath of the backbenchers) and so had never gone quite as far as Miliband in terms of opposing the 11% pay hike. Yet when Miliband used his first question to urge Cameron to back him, that’s exactly what happened.

And from that point on, Miliband never got out of first gear. His set of questions seemed to evaporate in front of him, and whatever preparations had been made proved not to provide the necessary cut through. No matter that Cameron was tired and lacked answers – you don’t need great answers if the questions are quite flat.

No matter that the substance of the issue had been dealt with in the first moments of PMQs, we still continued with MPs pay for a few questions more. Cameron was so keen to talk about MPs pay he returned to the issue in response to a completely different question. He’s probably tired. Which is fair enough really.

It took until the final couple of questions before Miliband generated any substantial oomph, but it was a bit late by then, the session had fizzled out. Cameron will be counted as the winner, but it was like watching the final rounds of a Rocky film. Both men staggering towards each other with a look that says “are we there yet?”.

It’s nearly Christmas. We can all rest soon…