The Sketch: Tragedy casts a shadow over the political ring

Everything's changed for David Cameron. The Prime Minister said something true and useful in PMQs. Gordon Brown has emerged from the abyss into which we cast him. Boring he may be, flat-footed as ever, pettily partisan – but he is still there without having changed a jot. And so, as he confronts his enemies, abusers, and critics it is possible to discern the lineaments of shame as they – we – review the way he was treated in his wilderness year.

Personally I'm shameless so I don't know what it is. If not shame, it's a sort of post-binge discomfort. An emotional bust after a 12-month boom of Brown-bashing. A Sunday morning feeling that makes a fellow wish he went to church more often. And if I'm like that, goodness knows what reasonable people are experiencing.

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He stands up in PMQs and is perfectly excusable. What an amazing achievement!

He isn't ridiculous any more. Cameron has discerned this and has reverted from idling contempt to his old strategy of making Brown reveal his psychological flaws. The trick that works most reliably depends on Brown being so paranoid, defensive, and hateful of Tories that he will never agree with a word they say (Mrs Thatcher excepted, obviously).

So Cameron makes a plausible point about the council children's head investigating the failings of her own department in the death of Baby P. He says it shouldn't be like that. People responsible for a disaster shouldn't be directing the inquiry into their own failings. He didn't say it would be like Tony Blair chairing the commission of inquiry into the war in Iraq. He asked whether the PM agreed with his own minister for Children that such an inquiry structure was less than optimal.

Gordon walked obediently into Cameron's drafting-gate. He launched a sombre "I speak for the nation" prevarication which set Cameron up for the familiar retort, "I ask a perfectly straightforward question and..."

A stung PM countered with a most aggressive defence saying how sorry he was to hear such party political points. Uproar! Counter-uproar. The Speaker sought to remind them they were debating a child who had "gone before" and that old-fashioned remark calmed them.

Cameron was able to press his wounded feelings into the public consciousness (he has a nice touch) and that was more than he might have hoped for. But this Tory game can be defused very simply by Gordon responding to similar questions with a Blair-like formula: "I actually rather agree with the Hon Gentleman," and sitting down. What a roar he'd get.

Cameron is the vulnerable one in these exchanges; he's suddenly almost fragile. It's all very odd.

simoncarr@sketch.sc

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