By Sam Macrory - 24th February 2010
For somone recovering from an encounter with the full forces of hell, Alistair Darling looked remarkably sanguine at PMQs.
Given that the man sitting next him, Gordon Brown, is the prime suspect for unleashing those very forces, Darling did a very good job of looking is if he hadn't actually said what he had said on Sky TV the previous day.
Prime minister and chancellor chatted and laughed their way through PMQs as if a cross word had never been exchanged between them.
Conservative leader David Cameron got the biggest laugh of the day when he suggested that if they got any closer they might as well start kissing.
That morning, in an appearance on the GMTV sofa – Downing St has unconvincingly insisted that the appointment was arranged before Darling's revelations on Sky – the PM seemed to suggest that those hellish forces may have been released, but were nothing to do with him.
"I was never part of anything to do with this", the PM insisted – the "this" doesn't translate to the "forces of hell" argue Downing Street, who are also keen to stress that the two men held a face to face meeting after the PM's GMTV interview and that all is well at Downing Street.
Apparently the chancellor's wife Maggie Darling, has also been spotted around Downing Street with no suggestion of a fall out with the first family.
The story – and the famously safe-handed Darling is surely too canny an operator not to have been deliberately engaging in a bit of self-promotion as he kept alive the weekend's bullying allegations against the PM – made for a lively PMQs, with even the speaker John Bercow unable to resist a lame gag about needing to call the anti-bullying hotline.
But although Darling's interview and the PM's protestations made for easy-pickings for the Tories, the opposition will be watching fall-out over the next few days with nail-biting tension.
For despite a series of damaging stories surrounding the prime minister, the poll gap has narrowed to just six points between the two parties compared to the double digit lead the Tories enjoyed last summer.
The botched plot against the PM's leadership by former ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt failed to translate into a poll boost for the Tories, and nor did the allegations of Downing St disarray set out in a recent insider account by Peter Watt, the former Labour general secretary.
The Tories had pinned high hopes on the Watt expose – the public seemed largely unimpressed. Even this week's stumbling involvement of the National Bullying Helpline's Christine Pratt failed to turn the bullying story into a poll boost for the Tories.
So if, following Darling's personally-motivated stoking of the bullying allegations, the polls continue to creep in the government's favour, then the growing sense of concern at CCHQ will turn to outright bafflement – and perhaps a growing sense that the Tories cannot work out how to avoid being on the receiving end of a big, bullying – and at times clunking – fist.
Sam Macrory is features editor of The House Magazine.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd