Prime minister's questions

Sketch
By Nick Assinder
Political Correspondent, BBC News website

Unsurprisingly, the final question time before the long summer recess was largely another of the "we're all in this together" events.

Leaders stood united against terror

Michael Howard avoided confrontation in favour of a series of questions on specific actions the prime minister might be taking to combat terrorism and tackle the preaching of extremism in the UK.

He got a series of positive responses and the signal that Home Secretary Charles Clarke was about to set out more detail on just these issues a few minutes later. Which he did.

But then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy came close to injecting a different tone.

By even mentioning the word "Iraq" at the moment any politician risks censure.

Mr Kennedy was not deterred, referring to the warning from Prince Hassan of Jordan that Iraq was heading for civil war.

Civil war

Worse, in some eyes, he asked the prime minister to give a date for when British troops might start being withdrawn from Iraq.

Kennedy raised Iraq issue

The prime minister does not want to hear any of this at the moment and was visibly angered by the direction of the questioning.

No, he did not agree Iraq was close to civil war and showing any hesitation over, or lack of commitment to, the campaign in Iraq would, he suggested, be playing into the terrorists hands.

British troops were there to help the process of creating a democratic Iraq, which is precisely what the people of Iraq wanted and the terrorists were trying to stop, he declared.

Loyal backbencher Mike Gapes was more to the prime minister's liking when he asked Mr Blair to agree there could be no justification for terrorist attacks anywhere in the world.

Harry Potter

This echoed the earlier suggestion by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that it was time to stop "making excuses" for the terrorists.

Harry Potter made an appearance

Mr Gapes got a far shorter reply - but that is the danger of stating the prime minister's known view for him.

There was a lighter moment when Labour's Anne Begg introduced Harry Potter.

The prime minister confessed his Harry Potter brief was slim (non existent actually) but said he understood the first chapter talked about the prime minister.

He did not, needless to say, remind MPs the picture of the fictional premier was deeply unflattering.

Instead he pointed out said PM had a minister of magic - something he was still looking for himself.