The Opposition Leader is hopeless, and the Prime Minister is worse

“Ed Miliband will be trying very difficult,” said the BBC’s Westminster correspondent Laura Koennsberg before Prime Minister’s Questions. It was a gaffe, but a very interesting one nevertheless, because the Opposition Leader tried very hard indeed to be difficult. But he failed – albeit noisily.

Somebody has obviously told Mr Miliband that he is barely audible, too adenoidal, and lacking in passion. But I think it highly unlikely that anyone told him to therefore use PMQs as a launch vehicle for his tonsils. And I can’t imagine that the hordes of advisers (to whom he is now no doubt doomed to listen) suggested that he waste all his Welfare Reform questions on being sanctimonious about cancer sufferers. Either way, Ed threw a sort of shouting hissy-fit about allowances for cancer patients, which Camerlot brushed aside as if they might be so many opportunistic attempts to skewer the Tories on the Nasty Party accusation.

This is – let’s face it – exactly what they were. And although I regret that such a serious subject was thrown away to gain five minutes advantage in front of the TV cameras, by the end of the session it seemed hard to recall what he’d been going on about. This is the worst result you can get as an Opposition Leader at PMQs.

His last observation – a ploddingly ironic suggestion that the PM should ‘pause, listen & reflect’ about the treatment of cancer patients – evoked forced laughter from the Labour benches. But Miliband’s MPs weren’t looking happy as the Chamber emptied in order to allow the real business to proceed. You have to assume they know that laughing about Coalition policy U-turns is no substitute for having a policy of your own. Ed Miliband is become a condemned man making leaden jokes about the Judge’s black hat.

It must be obvious to everyone by now that PMQs is watched by a tiny audience of wonks, and has no bearing whatsoever on the conclusions reached one way or another by the average voter. This must be so, for the simple reason that, were even 25% of the nation to tune into this weekly playground scrap, there is no way the Miliband of Hope would be 5% ahead in the opinion polls. Ed’s own approval rating is stuck at -53, which in all fairness you have to call widespread disapproval. But as I’ve noted before, with only this to beat, the Camerlot is making a complete hash of things.

Thus – in this our hour of greatest danger since 1940 – we find ourselves between a crock and a hardface. It is therefore hardly surprising that the standard of debate at PMQs is risible: “it wuz the bankers wot done it; Nah it wa’nt, it wuz the Labour profligates. Yerr. Boo. Order. Answer, Answer. Shame.”

So it was fitting in this context that, towards the end of such a non-event, David Cameron should sound as if he’d said that “Time is running out for Gadhaffi, because the aerosol is having a massive impact”. Yes, all those CFCs were finally going to send the Libyan madman to his grave. He’d really said ‘air assault’ – but if Gadhaffi holds out much longer, then it may well be down to the aerosols.