PMQs: A loser or a leader?

Facing the Commons minutes after conceding one of the biggest U-turns of his premiership was never going to be easy for Gordon Brown.

The prime minister's decision to fold to would-be rebels over compensation for those worse off after the scrapping of the 10p income tax starting rate broke in the hour before Mr Brown entered the Commons chamber.

An apparently carefully planted question from a Labour backbencher allowed him to explain how "this government has done more than any government in the last century to tackle child poverty and help low-income families".

But sympathetic cheers were soon replaced by roars from the opposition benches as David Cameron launched his sustained attack against Mr Brown on the issue.

Unsurprisingly the Conservative leader did not spare the prime minister, saying he had suffered a "massive loss of authority" after "panic concessions" from the government.

His assertion that the Labour party were beginning to realise they had a "loser, not a leader" was a piercing one and begs the question about the extent of the political damage his leadership has suffered.

It was a measure of the extent of the crisis that the prime minister abandoned his usual tactic of turning his responses to Mr Cameron's jibes against him through questions of his own.

Instead Mr Brown did his best to attack the Conservatives' own uncertainty on the policy as the "'no', 'don't know', 'yes' party".

Downing Street tacticians played the situation with a straight bat. Mr Brown cited Tory policy documents showing their own lack of a substantive line on the issue. He contrasted his party's commitment to cutting child poverty with Tory tax cut plans. And he constantly referred to the government's record on the minimum wage, raising benefits and expanding tax credits.

Unfortunately for the prime minister, Mr Cameron's decision to focus all his six questions on the issue was a sound one and undermined Mr Brown's defensive efforts.

This was a day on which damage control could be the prime minister's only realistic objective, but he was forced into repeating himself by the end of the exchange. Mr Cameron, by contrast, was able to move seamlessly through different angles of attack.

First it was the personal damage to the prime minister of the U-turn; then came criticism of the "tax-con Budget" and an introduction of the spin motif through Mr Brown's commitment to "self-interest, not the national interest".

Disillusionment from Labour backbenchers at their "scared rabbit in the headlights" leader and, finally, a call to voters to punish Labour at the upcoming local elections completed the assault.

The embattled prime minister claimed the "central issue" was that of taking people out of poverty, but Mr Cameron insisted it was Mr Brown's "pathetic" efforts to "save his skin" which deserved most attention.

His claims that "calculation, not conviction" would be particularly hard for Mr Brown, a genuine conviction politician, to hear.

But with the Tory leader armed to the teeth with such potent political ammunition, it was always going to be a tough half-an-hour in the Commons.