Whitehall put on PMQs alert

If anyone wants to know how rattled Downing Street is by the hammering that Gordon Brown now regularly receives at Prime Ministers Questions they should read this story in The Sunday Times. It reveals that civil servants are being instructed to spend more time thinking about what topics might come up at PMQs and to find ‘good third-party endorsements’ for government policies including from opposition politicians.

It is true that PMQs isn’t the be and end all of politics—if it was Prime Minister Hague would be riding high in the polls—but it does help determine the mood at Westminster. Today’s poll which shows Labour marginally ahead of the Tories isn’t seen as representing a shift in the political momentum in part because David Cameron keeps winning the Wednesday lunch-time clash.