Would his appearances highlight the Brown absences?

Yet again Gordon Brown had other “pressing business” and managed to avoid his weekly commons scrutiny at PMQs – his place being taken as usual by Harriet Harman.

I haven’t added this up by my guess is that the PM so arranges his diary that he is facing far fewer PMQ sessions than any other prime minister in modern times. It’s getting to look like a deliberate strategy to avoid something where he never looks really comfortable.

The practice has been for the second team to turn out when the PM is away so today we got William Hague for the Tories and Vince Cable for the Lib Dems.

But why doesn’t Cameron just do it anyway? Wouldn’t this emphasise Brown’s continued absences and give the opposition leader further coverage.

This seems such a simple move which has benefits for Cameron and Nick Clegg, if he were to follow suit.

I know everybody talks about a status thing but why should that bother the Tory leader?