PMQs Verdict: 5 years, 146 sessions, 73 wasted hours

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. Today – I hope – will be the last time. The next PMQs won’t be for months now. Either Miliband or Cameron will sit in the Prime Minister’s seat, and the other will be banished to the pages of history (or at the very least, the backbenches).

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. And I doubt he’s answered even 100 questions straight in that time. But he did today. The first question. A big question. A question on VAT. Would he rule out a hike in VAT? Would he wriggle on the line like his Chancellor repeating the mantra that he has “no plans” to raise VAT. No – he’d rule it out. He’d say he won’t do it.

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. And yet Miliband still falls for his relatively small number of traps. I cannot for the life of me fathom why Miliband was not prepared for the eventuality that Cameron would deny plans for a VAT rise. It isn’t the first time that Cameron has “shot his fox” at PMQs. Nor was it the first time that Miliband, having been bamboozled by the very first answer, ended up frittering away the rest of the session. He’s a very smart man is Miliband. Thoughtful and rigorous. But thinking on his feet with hundreds of boorish oafs shouting at him? That has never been his forte. In the end it was Hugh Bayley – in his last PMQs – who hit Cameron hardest on VAT.

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. And this was one of Miliband’s most difficult outings. The grey patch onto of his head looked bigger at the start of the session and may even have grown as PMQs went on. Tomorrow he’s up against Paxman (now outed as a Tory). One hopes he’s saving his best material for then.

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. And yet he still pretends he doesn’t understand the format. He asks for questions that he answers. Perhaps he secretly longs to be back on the opposition benches, where he could ask the questions each Wednesday.

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. And there were nearly as many lines of attack for Miliband today. Lets recap the last few days for the Tories. The candidate who had over his links to the EDL. Cameron announcing his retirement in advance, and then getting booed by OAPs at an Age UK event. And then this morning his election guru held an event that the press were invited to and then uninvited from. The wheels are coming off the Tory campaign. There was so much ammunition that Miliband should have driven into PMQs in a van carrying all of the attack lines he could wield on all of these topics. Wasn’t he ready? Did he leave them in his file? Perhaps we shall never know.

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. And he’s never had an easier opportunity to attack the Labour leader than when Simon Danczuk, a Labour MP lest we forget, stood up in the Commons. Only a few days ago Danczuk was slagging Miliband off in the press. As my colleague Conor Pope notes, MPs doing that usually have the good grace to avoid PMQs for a while after that. Danczuk, a man perhaps unencumbered by grace or shame, decided to get himself on the order paper. As he stood up, he was cheered from the Tory benches. I hope he hated that, but I honestly can’t tell anymore. He went on to ask a question about asylum seekers. Cameron used his question as a handy stick with which to thrash Miliband. Thanks Simon. Thanks a bunch. A period of silence on your behalf would be welcome. A long period. Absolute silence. Like a trappist monk.

146 times David Cameron has stood at the Despatch Box for PMQs. We don’t know who will be sat in the key positions next time the Commons fills up for a PMQs session. But I know that I’m unlikely to write another PMQs verdict. Being passionate about politics, being up for the cut and thrust of debate and being interested in a battle of ideas is – it seems – not enough to keep someone from completely losing heart with this shallow weekly farce. I’ll probably watch PMQs most weeks in future to see if it gets any better, but I have no intention of giving this rabble, this farmyard, this bawdy and ill-mannered shouting match any further oxygen. Because writing about such pathetic squabbles seems so small whilst the issues we face as a nation are so large. And after 146 sessions, I’ve seen little so suggest that this is a decent use of anyone’s time in the pursuit of solving our nations problems.

Or to put it another way – there’s 73 hours I’m not getting back, which I could have spent doing something more productive.