Score draw at final PMQs before the local elections

May 1 2008 By Jonathan Walker, Political Editor

Political Editor Jonathan Walker witnessed the last Prime Minister's Questions before the nation goes to the polls today.

With local elections today, one might have expected a good knockabout fight during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. But hidden beneath the Punch and Judy show was a pretty good debate about an important issue - the right way to protect the public from terrorism.

It didn't start well. The first MP to quiz Gordon Brown was Brian Jenkins, the Labour MP for Tamworth in Staffordshire.

He asked Mr Brown for reassurances that he would take good care of the British economy as the world faced a global economic downturn.

It wasn't really a question - more an invitation for Mr Brown to talk about his commitment to keeping unemployment low and how evil the Tories are.

As David Cameron said: "The planted questions get tougher and tougher."

The Tory leader's quip got his backbenchers laughing, and set the tone for the rest of the session. Mr Cameron's topic was the controversial proposal to allow police to hold terror suspects for 42 days without trial in certain cases.

He had an ace up his sleeve - a dossier compiled by Labour whips naming the likely rebels on the Government's benches.

Whether through malice or incompetence, someone had leaked this document to the Conservatives, who were having fun with it.

MPs threatening trouble, according to the whips, include Richard Burden (Lab Birmingham Northfield), who is apparently "threatening to vote against".

Another Birmingham MP, Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr), is also a potential nuisance, apparently. Someone has noted next to his name: "Need to watch".

The Prime Minister responded by setting out the case for holding suspects for longer, namely that when police were dealing with global conspiracies involving lots of emails and other computer trickery, it might reasonably take a while to gather the evidence.

Mr Cameron set out the case against - that even the head of the Crown Prosecution Service said the power was not needed, and locking up young Muslims for 42 days without charge would be counter-productive.

For a while, they actually had a pretty discussion going. It couldn't last forever.

Mr Cameron predicted: "Everyone knows what's going to happen. We are going to have another rebellion, another climbdown, another U-turn."

Brown hit back: "This is a man who is a shallow salesman," and accused the Tory leader of failing to address the real issues.

For some time now, there's been a consensus that Mr Cameron is winning these weekly jousting matches with the Prime Minister.

But yesterday was different, and could probably be called a score draw. Labour MPs were pleased with the Prime Minister, and called out "more!" when he finished speaking.

The Conservative line of attack is clear. When the Prime Minister committed what was indeed a U-turn over compensating the losers in the abolition of the 10p tax rate, the Conservatives insisted he had been driven not by principle but by a desire to save his own skin.

This was a point Mr Cameron repeated yesterday, claiming Mr Brown's policy on terrorism was motivated by "political calculation and self interest".

Clearly, this is the Tory line of attack at the moment, and it fits in with the image of Gordon Brown as a plotter who coveted the keys to 10 Downing Street while Tony Blair was in power.

But Mr Brown's attack on the Tory leader as a showman also struck a nerve. The battle continues.