PMQs review: an end-of-term triumph for Miliband

The Labour leader is growing in confidence as Cameron's woes multiply.

Perhaps the only consolation that David Cameron can draw from today’s PMQs is that he won’t have to do it again for seven weeks. It is hard to recall a more confident performance from Ed Miliband or a more faltering one from Cameron.

If Cameron thinks that the solution to his woes is to revive the “Red Ed” jibe, he’s in even more trouble than we thought. That was the put-down that he fell back on after Miliband quipped: “the redder he gets, the less he convinces people”. When the Labour leader referred to the PM’s altercation with Conservative MP Jesse Norman, Cameron denounced him for recycling “tittle tattle” and “half-baked gossip” (note that he did not deny the encounter). But it was Cameron who came unstuck when Miliband turned to two issues of substance: the double-dip recession “made in Downing Street” and the “millionaires’ tax cut”. Cameron has still not found a convincing way to rebut the charge that he “makes the wrong choices and stands up for the wrong people”. His tactic of blaming “the mess” left by the last Labour government (“we will never forget what we were left by the party opposite,” he said) may have worked in the early days of the coalition but it is subject to ever-diminishing returns. Most voters view it as an evasive attempt to shift the blame for Britain’s economic woes.

Cameron’s strongest line was his declaration that “we back the workers, they back the shirkers”. As the polls indicate, the benefits caps is (lamentably) the most popular coalition policy. But the problem for Cameron is that he has failed to live up to the first part of this injunction. He has raised VAT and cut tax credits for the working poor, while handing a £40,000 tax cut to 14,000 millionaires. Back in January, when Miliband’s leadership was at its lowest ebb, almost no one would have forecast that he, not Cameron, would end the session in a position of strength. That he has done is reflective not only of his improved performance but of the series of disastrous blunders Cameron has made.