PMQs - a flat affair

One thing was clear from today's Prime Minister's Questions. Labour backbenchers must be counting down the days until they have a new Leader. Not that I'm casting aspersions at Harriet Harman. Quite the reverse, I regularly stick up for her and I admire her tenacity in pushing forward issues she feels are important.

Rather it's the fact that PMQs under her leadership have become curiously flat affairs. For all her good points, Harman doesn't have the fleetest of feet when it comes to the back and forth that the occasion demands, and as a result often launches into sentences which seem to have no end. This uneven performance is often met by a strange half-silence from the benches behind her. It's as if the Labour MPs want something to cheer, but they don't get it.

It could be, of course, that Members are simply paying attention to the Leader of the House's pleas that PMQs becomes a more decorous affair, but personally I feel it's more likely that they don't really feel they have much to shout about under Harriet's stewardship. You can say what you like about Ed Balls, but he certainly gets the noise levels up.

In other news, after a couple of good weeks, I'm detecting a worrying slide by David Cameron into his predecessors' penchant for 'not really asking the question'. By all means dodge the partisan nonsense, but when backbenchers are asking reasonable questions on behalf of their constituencies, let's have an answer or offer of a written answer please.