PMQs - 1st December 2010

What is Ed Miliband doing? His performance on Wednesday was awful. I know people sometimes have bad days, but frankly he'd lost the argument before he even set foot in the chamber.

Here's a quick and by no means comprehensive list of the things I would have considered talking about at PMQs:

The ill-advised comments of Howard Flight, which had made the Tories seem out of touch and callous. The continuing concerns about the way the NHS is being restructured. The Lib Dems were/are in disarray over whether to vote for, against or abstain over tuition fees - even Vince Cable, who is in charge of the bill, hadn't then decided what too do. There had been more protests over the fee increases. Wikileaks had just released documents suggesting the Governor of the Bank of England thought Cameron and Osborne weren't up to the job. The plan for elected Police Commissioners looks to undermine the impartiality of the police force.

So what does he ask about? The OBR report. Which said that growth this year will be better than expected and that 160,000 fewer jobs than expected will be lost through public sector cuts.

So he got torn to shreds. He questions had no direction. He didn't build momentum. Cameron couldn't believe his luck, it's hard to see how Ed Miliband could have made it any easier for him. And to top it all, he used a tired line about Thatcher which Cameron had obviously anticipated and deployed the headline-grabbing retort: 'I'd rather be a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown!'

Easy Cameron win.