David Cameron launched his own stop-and-search operation against the Prime Minister yesterday. What did he expect to find? Well, answers, apparently. Yes, I know, it was naive. The PM, predictably, refused to cooperate. Indeed, he seemed to think that the whole search for answers was a crime in itself.

From the beginning Gordon Brown looked suspicious. He entered the chamber, his hands of bitten stubs gripping his crazy stack of papers. He kept flashing his new maniacal smile. He looked bumptious and argumentative. But is that enough, really, for a stop and search? Well, Mr Brown might not be black or Asian but he is a politician. These days, that makes him extremely suspect.

The chamber felt different. I could not think why and then I remembered that this was the first PMQs without the Orange One. I had hoped that Peter Hain would be remembered in some small way, perhaps by a symbolic can of Tango placed on the front bench. Without him, the entire chamber seemed a whiter shade of pale.

Mr Cameron began his operation with a clunk. I am sure that Dave wanted to look like one of those cool cops on TV or, even better, the sexy one in Spooks. The sad truth is that he was more PC Plod, although, in his case, that would be DC Plod. “For more than three years the Conservative Party has been arguing . . .” began DC Plod as Labour MPs screamed and stabbed their fingers at the rows of Tory MPs.

“Order! Order!” cried the Speaker in vain. DC Plod, looking rueful, picked up where he had left off: “. . . that we should scrap the form the police have to fill in every time they have to stop someone.”

He waved something that looked like a dry-cleaning ticket. “The form is a foot long,” he cried, but, as the paper refused to unfurl, it wasn’t that long at all. “It takes seven minutes to complete. Will you confirm you will now scrap the stop form?”

Mr Brown began with a stutter. “Let me say, let me say, let me say, let me say, that the Flanagan report, which was published in November, recommended that we reduce and remove the bureaucracy associated with the filling in of forms. He will publish his final report next Monday!”

The Tories were screaming now: “Answer! Answer!”

Mr Brown boomed back that he was taking action, although I am not sure that waiting around for a report is, strictly, action. “I know the Prime Minister is physically incapable of answering a straight question!” shouted DC Plod. In just one police area over a year the form had taken up 9,216 hours of police time. “Let me ask him again! This is the form! Will he scrap it?”

The dry-cleaning ticket fluttered before Mr Brown. “I can only refer him to the Flanagan report,” roared the PM. There was mayhem in the chamber now and, clearly, the whole search for answers operation was in crisis.

DC Plod became very aggressive himself: “Why doesn’t he stop flannelling about the Flanagan report and answer the question. This is the form. We think it should go! Will it stay? Yes or no?”

But the Great Gordo would not say. Who knows, perhaps it is a state secret. Perhaps he does not know. He became, if possible, even more defensive. “Crime is now down 30 per cent! We are the first government since 1945 to see crime down! He should be congratulating us, not condemning us!”

DC Plod looked exasperated. Mr Brown beamed triumphantly. The search-for-answers operation had collapsed before our eyes.

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