David Cameron is brutal, Nick Clegg plays dummy and Ed Miliband fails to take ... - Telegraph.co.uk

But at Prime Minister's questions you either kill or are killed, and you have to show fighting spirit or people conclude that you are easy meat. Part of Mr Clegg's trouble is that every Wednesday he plays dummy, so gets no chance to stand up for himself.

The House was in uproar. Rival gangs of supporters surrendered to the mood of nervous hilarity and cheered whenever a speaker was called from whom some mighty stroke of rhetoric might be expected.

Nobody received more solid cheers than Sir Peter Tapsell (C, Louth and Horncastle), who as the longest serving MP has the title of Father of the House. Labour members love listening to Sir Peter, for he corresponds to their possibly not very accurate idea of what a Tory grandee should be: a man of orotund self-confidence, who first entered the House in 1959, and sounds as if he is speaking in 1879.

Sir Peter has never served as a minister, and is by no means slavishly loyal to the Government. But on this occasion his scorn was directed at the Opposition front bench: "Pas de zele [grave accent on first "e"] was Talleyrand's advice to leaders of the opposition, which meant he thought they should not exist in a permanent state of hysteria."

After this Olympian rebuke, the House calmed down. Mr Cameron grew playful and referred to "my good friend Boris Johnson": the joke being that Mr Johnson often contradicts the Prime Minister.

Not just the hair behind Mr Cameron's ears, but the tuft of hair at the front of his head, seem – unless this is a trick of the light – to be going grey. Perhaps that is what Mr Johnson's teasing has done to him. But Mr Miliband cannot yet claim credit for a single one of those grey hairs.