Battle of the backbenchers

Prime minister's questions sketch
By Nick Assinder
Political correspondent, BBC News website

David Cameron knew he couldn't better last week's performance - so he didn't really try.

Mr Cameron challenged Brown to call election, again

Gordon Brown knew he needed to do a great deal better than last week - so he tried. And he almost pulled it off.

Mr Cameron chose the health service and claims government targets were to blame for hospital infections.

No they weren't, said Gordon Brown. Yes they were said David Cameron. No they weren't said Gordon Brown... etc.

Meanwhile, Labour backbenchers did what they forgot to do last week and rallied behind their prime minister.

But, subtlety not being the defining quality of a mass of MPs, they overdid it.

Mr Brown's parliamentary bag carrier, Ian Austin, overdid it to the extent that Speaker Michael Martin had to step in to tell him to pipe down.

Call election

Still, not to be out done in the overdoing it stakes, Tory MPs rose to the challenge and managed to get one of their own number, Stewart Jackson, told to keep it down by Mr Speaker

Mr Brown was cheered on by his MPs

At one point, clearly aware the jeer-ometer was tipping in the prime minister's favour, Mr Cameron panicked a bit and whipped out his ultimate weapon - go on then Gordon, call an election, he demanded.

Nice hit, but it didn't have quite the same impact as it had done the week before.

Then he switched tack onto his demand for a referendum on the new, not-the-constitution EU treaty.

Finally showing a bit of nimble footwork, the prime minister declared: "I see he has given up on the health service now."

He then went on to mess it up by referring to William Hague as the foreign secretary ("only a matter of time" said Mr Cameron) and, far worse, fumbling his only pre-prepared soundbites.

Take the mickey

First he failed to deliver a proper punch line to a joke about Mr Cameron comparing himself to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mr Cable asked the best question

Then he delivered such a glowing tribute to ex-Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, it was difficult to tell whether he was about to offer him a job, or was actually attempting to take the mickey.

And the joke? It started well, with the PM intending to say that, at this rate every member of the party would have a chance of becoming Lib Dem leader.

What he actually said was that every member of the party would have the chance to be a member of the party.

No matter, his MPs knew where he was going with it and still gave him to sort of response Bernard Manning would have paid good money for.

Meanwhile, the man who had just ruled himself out of the Lib Dem leadership stakes, deputy leader Vince Cable, showed he was perfectly capable of flummoxing the prime minister by asking him if there was a moral case for using the tax system to support marriage.

It was the best question of the day in a session that basically turned into a contest to see which gang of backbenchers could shout the loudest.