Settle Down, Everyone...

Dizzy, whom I often read, has gone stark raving bonkers if he seriously thinks that PMQs yesterday will turn out to be a seminal moment. But he's not the only one going overboard. People were going bananas on Iain Dale's blog last night, the Spectator Coffee House is likening David Cameron to Mohammed Ali, and the odds on Cameron being the only current leader of the "big three" to lead his party into the next election have dropped from 25-1 to 6-1. This reaction is mad.

Sure, Cameron had a good few minutes against Brown yesterday. But what will it actually count for ?

The problem (or should I say one of them) with being highly interested in politics is that you watch every single move. You think through the possible implications of it all. You read what you can into everything you see. But the public doesn't.

Frankly the bloke in the street does not give a monkey's about who stuffs whom at Question Time. William Hague regularly took Tony Blair apart - often very entertainly, with wit and style - and it never did him one jot of good.

We now know that the next general election is at least 18 months away. There aren't even any local elections until next May. An awful lot of water will pass under the bridge between now and then. It was only two weeks ago that many political pundits were writing Cameron off. Brown could do no wrong. Now we're led to believe that the exact opposite applies. In another two weeks it might have turned full circle again.

The only way in which this could possibly do Brown any long-term hard is if it quick-starts a loss in confidence in him to such an extent that it ignites, next week, some unstoppable momentum for a referendum on the EU Treaty. And that's unlikely because Brown will move heaven and earth not to call one.

It might have been good to watch the Miserable Scottish Git get a good hiding. But theatre is all it was.