Sketchup
A selection of lines from parliamentary sketch-writers.
David Cameron's decision to hold his news conference just before Gordon Brown's had members of the lobby racing around Westminster.
, who dashed from one to the other, compares the Tory leader and prime minister to a couple of fighters about to get into the ring:
"Dave was on good form, like a pugnacious shadow boxer."
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"Gordo was also on good form, relaxed, confident, authoritative and completely in election mode... The Great Clunking Fist has become the Great Clunking Karate Chop."
For , the most noteworthy element of Gordon Brown's conference was that he told a joke - about Bob Ainsworth's "gaffe", when he alluded to an election date :
"So unexpected was this zinger that we heard the rarest sound at a Brown press conference: laughter."
to the Labour party ahead of the general election, having watched Education Secretary Ed Balls answering questions in the House of Commons:
"Do anything to prevent this man appearing next to a Labour logo during the election push. Muzzle him. Throw a Guantanamo hood over him. Catapult him to the South Pole. Whatever it takes!
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"Just make sure he is frozen out of your push for votes, because otherwise you may not receive many."
The Independent's Simon Carr reports on another day at the Iraq inquiry, where the committee members, in his opinion, fall short of their role as grand inquisitors, citing a question from Sir Lawrence Freedman to former Defence Secretary Des Browne:
"'Was Iraq an embarrassment or did you feel it had to be brought to as good a conclusion as possible?'
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"Honestly, Deirdre! What did the old fool expect his witness to say?"
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