David Maddox: Ladling out of jibes on tax and some suspect allies

But this, according to Labour MPs asking questions of their great leader in PMQs yesterday, was what precisely might be visited upon the UK if the Tories win on 6 May.

The final PMQs before an election is, if nothing else, a last chance for some political point-scoring, but even with the gloomy poll readings for Labour in recent weeks it surely was not a time for desperate hyperbole?

Well, step forward Battersea Labour MP Martin Linton, a former journalist whose most notable political accolade is to be named the most boring MP in parliament.

For once he sparked some interest as he sagely warned that a return to the Tories was a return of the soup kitchen.

But, not to be outdone, the former Europe minister Dennis MacShane, who has never been described as dull, pointed out that the Tories' allies in the EU had views on "homosexuals and the Waffen-SS that would be unacceptable in British politics".

Everybody seemed to be laughing, except an increasingly grumpy looking Gordon Brown who sat hunched on his bench arms tightly folded. Who needs body-language experts?

Maybe it was the exchanges he had with David Cameron on businessmen supporting the Tories on National Insurance.

When the jumpy Cameron quoted Diageo boss Paul Walsh all the Labour MPs shouted: "He's a Tory."

"He sits on his (pointing to Brown] business council," Mr Cameron retorted. "He's (Walsh] probably a Tory now," he added. "So are half the country."

But then there was a reminder of Labour's long-lost past. MPs fell into complete silence to hear one of the true veterans of the Commons, Liverpool MP Bob Wareing, who regretted the drift to indirect taxes that hit the poor, and demanded crippling taxes on the "billionaire rich".

Mr Brown struggled to agree, so he agreed with something else which Mr Wareing had not even mentioned, child tax credit.