DOES IT REALLY HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS?

Jewell and Warris, Morecambe and Wise, Canon and Ball - all good knockabout comedy double acts. And I think, having watched Prime Minister`s Questions from the Mother of Parliaments yesterday, we might now add Brown and Cameron to the list.

It was a truly depressing experience. At the beginning of proceedings, there were the now usual tributes paid to those servicemen who had lost their lives in Afghanistan during the week since the last PMQs. Those tributes themselves are always a stark reminder of the seriousness of politics and they at least appear to be genuinely observed by our elected representatives on all sides. Trouble is, it doesn`t last and the air of seriousness and sombre reflection gives way in an instant to the yah-boo, schoolyard exchanges between Brown and Cameron.

They are like leaders of rival gangs caught up in a playtime vendetta, quite unable to do other than hurl insults and accusations across a despatch box which might be the only thing that keeps them from coming to blows. Their henchmen join in the hullabaloo, finger pointing, order paper waving and leaving the ineffectual Squeaker of the House, John Bercow, to shout `Order` more times than you hear in a Fleet Street bar.

It might be called Prime Minister`s Questions, but the Prime Minister never seems to give a straight answer to a straight question, preferring instead to use each question as an excuse to restate how wonderful he and his party are and how wrong, wrong and wrong again are the Opposition. After twenty minutes or so of these fol-de-rols, all semblence of the sombre reflection has vanished in a welter of claim and counter-claim, accusation and shrieking denial.

Now, it might - just might - be `funny` if it were not supposed to be so serious. Here we are on the brink of a General Election and the notion of considered, sober, even courteous debate never crosses the minds of our MPs, who delude themselves with the idea that the electorate cannot fail to be impressed by such performances. How wrong they are, for when Parliament is reduced to the level of the vaudeville, especially in the wake of the expenses scandal, the broken manifesto promises, the stark reality of a broken society and the biggest financial crisis in my lifetime, the electorate - far from being impressed - are likely to turn their backs on the whole thing and think, after all, that they might be just as well served by Canon and Ball, Morecambe and Wise or any of the other comedy gold double acts. At least they made us laugh rather than weep with despair.

Does it really have to be like this?