PMQs Verdict: Nevermind what Cameron said – it’s what he wouldn’t say that matters

There are only three PMQs left until the election. Three more of these turgid, unattractive, unedifying and borderline pointless sessions to sit through before May. If this is the highlight of the Parliamentary week then Parliament can’t prorogue quick enough, frankly.

Evidently many MPs feel the same, judging by the wide open spaces on the green benches this lunchtime. After a few minutes MPs had all spaced themselves out a little bit to make the place look a bit less sparse. Where normally MPs are forced to sit on steps or on top of each other to get a seat at PMQs, this week there was space for a lie down. Up in the heavens, the press gallery was similarly quiet compared to its usual standards. It may be that this long, long Parliament has run its course before it actually comes to an end. The motions are very much being gone through here.

And what of the jousting between two political titans in this world famous chamber? Cameron vs Miliband. (Stop laughing at the back).

It was terrible.

Miliband led off by talking about immigration. It has been confirmed this week that the Tories will spectacularly fail to meet the immigration target they set for themselves, and the Labour leader wanted to pull Cameron up on his failed pledge. Except there’s a problem with that approach, because that meant Miliband was attacking Cameron for failing to meet an immigration cap that Labour doesn’t believe should exist.

It was – at best – point scoring. At a time when the public believe all politicians are rubbish, and one of Labour’s biggest problems is Miliband’s credibility as a future PM, I don’t understand what haranguing Cameron for failing to do something you think is a bad idea is going to achieve.

All this gave Cameron an opportunity to pull out his 2010 pledge card. He was unperturbed by the fact that he’d failed to keep all of his pledges. He was crowing about those he had managed to keep (which largely involved not cutting things that old people like). It was a strange approach from the PM – look at how well I’m doing keeping some of my promises – perhaps best summed up by LabourList’s own Conor Pope:

But despite the logical inconsistency of Cameron’s argument, it was pretty popular with his backbenchers. They crowed and yelled and caterwauled. (It is a strange place, the Commons, where the loudest, rudest and most unpleasant gang is deemed to have “won” by making the most noise).

Miliband moved on instead to talk about leadership. The Tory backbenchers liked that. But what they liked far less was a return to the thorny subject of the TV debates. Miliband says he’ll be attending the April 30th debate scheduled as a head to head with the PM. Cameron, slipping and slithering, did anything he could not to agree to the debate. And yet if Miliband is as hopeless as Cameron imagines (and the Labour leader was far from his best today) then where’s the risk in debating him? Does he fear what a debate would look like without a few hundred bully boys screaming behind him? Without planted questions? Without the Chancellor whispering in his lug hole?

A Labour source tells me that’s have been ZERO meeting between Labour and the Tories on TV debates since Cameron said five weeks that he favoured a head to head debate. One might suggest he is a wimpy, pathetic, hypocritical, all mouth and no trousers wimp. Not me though, I’m far too polite.

The reality of today’s PMQs was that it was as much about what Cameron refused to say as it was about the bluster of what he deigned to say. He also failed to rule out a rise in tuition fees, which remind us that after five years of slash and burn, we still don’t really know what a future Tory government might look like. What other nasties do they have hidden? Will the media poke around Tory plans with the same vigour they (rughtly) apply to Labour’s. I shan’t hold my breathe, but it’s worth asking regardless.

Three more of these sessions to go. And then we can get on with the election. And our lives. And perhaps – perchance – some debates worth watching.

I live in hope.