Gordon Brown distinguishes himself at Prime Minister’s Questions once again:

Jeremy Corbyn’s point also went unanswered. He glanced at the fact that 100 of our troops had been killed but that 2,000 Afghans had suffered the same fate. He asked the question that never gets a response from the Government. With poppy production at an all-time high, why don’t we turn the poppy into a cash crop to solve the worldwide shortage of diamorphine. Tax it, and use the funds to police the industry.

The only reply to this was instinctive weasling, “we have doubled, er halved, the number of poppy-free provinces”. Which is doubtless consistent with an all-time high in production.

Many of us would like to know the objections to Corbyn’s proposal but the PM can’t tell us. He is unable to hold a public conversation. At best it’s a dialogue in which one side has a turn to say things then he has a turn to say other things.

It’s difficult to think of another public-facing job where this kind of evasiveness and inarticulacy would be tolerated. Imagine attending a job interview unkempt, refusing to answer a straight question, and revealing that your people skills were shit. Picture Gordon Brown getting a job in a supermarket or in a bar.

‘Do you know when you’re getting more tuna in?’

‘This store is working towards fulfilling its demand for tuna in the very near future.’

…or…

‘Pint of lager, please.’

‘While we regret that supplies of lager are currently causing difficulties for the public, we have taken the right long term decisions to secure lager supply in the coming years.’

I have to say that Brown, as Prime Minister, is the man for the job, if only because I’m buggered if I can think of anything else he could do with such manifest shortcomings. Shortcomings that would be more likely to be tolerated if there was any inkling of an underpinning philosophy, plan or direction.

No wonder he’s clinging to power like an asylum seeker round the legs of a Home Office official on a flight to Zimbabwe. The after-dinner speaking circuit is hardly going to be chanting his name when the Labour Party finally finds its collective cojones and tells him to do one.

We’re told (by the usual ’sources’) that the Prime Minister is warm, witty and articulate in private. The fact that not one molecule of those qualities have leaked into his public persona would suggest that somebody, somewhere, is protesting too much.