Emails but no females as spinners fail No 10

One of David Cameron’s closest aides, we learn, sends a weekly email to backbench Tories shortly before PMQs gets underway, with a handy list of cosy, underarm questions they might like to ask the Prime Minister.

They’re all on tough subjects like “isn’t the economy picking up nicely?”, “aren’t we a cracking Government?” “aren’t Labour clueless?” and so on. Gavin Williamson, Mr Cameron’s Parliamentary aide, tells backbenchers in this weekly missive that any “mentions” of the topics he lists would be “greatly appreciated” by Number 10.

The revelation that PMQs is a ludicrously stage-managed affair may not be a huge shock to anyone who has seen the display of planted questions, orchestrated cheering and faux outrage which the Commons is treated to each Wednesday.

Still, it’s nice to know that just occasionally, the party choreographers let things slip.

Overt stage management was not a charge you could throw at the Tory spin team yesterday, for example, after they allowed David Cameron to line up alongside an all-male frontbench – in the very week Labour turned its guns on his “women problem”.

“I guess they didn’t let women into the Bullingdon Club either,” Ed Miliband crowed. It didn’t look great.

The PM looked desperate.

“This party is proud of the fact we had a woman Prime Minister,” he roared back, failing to add whether he was also proud that it had later booted her unceremoniously out of office. Or that this was all now decades ago, anyway.

But Mr Miliband had seen this coming a mile away.

“The (PM) mentioned Lady Thatcher,” he said, a dry smile on his face. “Unlike him, she was a Tory leader who won general elections.”

Ouch. Even Mr Cameron laughed at that one – through teeth gritted tighter than a rottweiler’s. Sometimes, it seems, a little stage management can go a long way.