Sombre mood hangs over Commons

A grim and sombre mood hung over the House of Commons today as Gordon Brown opened Prime Minister's Question Time with an all-too-familiar roll call of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Mr Brown said they had died on the "noblest of missions", and everyone else agreed.

There were further dire warnings about the situation in Zimbabwe and what the Prime Minister called Robert Mugabe's "criminal cabale" and Labour backbencher David Winnick described as the daily "murderous violence".

In a session dominated by foreign affairs, MPs also voiced concerns about the situation facing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Only when another foreign affairs issue was raised did anyone show any desire for the traditional argy bargy. That issue was the one which comes back time after time at Question Time - the future of the European Union and in particular this time the Irish people's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

David Cameron began by suggesting simply that, following the Irish referendum vote, the treaty should be declared dead. The Prime Minister wasn't prepared to go that far. The Government had respect for the Irish decision, but also had respect for the other EU countries which were in the process of ratifying the treaty.

"Either this treaty is dead, or it's not," observed Mr Cameron. "Why doesn't the Prime Minister have the courage to say that the treaty is dead?"

The Tory leader suspected that Mr Brown was among those European leaders who wanted to make the Irish vote again.

"It's ridiculous to ask the Irish to vote twice when we haven't been given the chance to vote once. The Irish people have said 'No'. Which part of 'No' don't you understand?" The Prime Minister harped back to Maastricht and John Major's decision to go ahead with ratification without a referendum.

He thought the Tory demand for a referendum now was "not opposition of principle, but opposition for opposition's sake - once again".

"I know the Prime Minister wants to live in the past, but we want to learn from the past," Mr Cameron retorted.

Now that the treaty was half dead on the floor, the Government did not want to kill it off, said the Tory leader, who finished off by saying of Mr Brown that he had "seen more spine in a jellyfish".

The Prime Minister's response was the one he always ends up with on the issue which most divides the parties: "We are in favour of Europe. You lot are not."

by Westminster editor John Hipwood