Britain:David Cameron branded Gordon Brown "a phoney" yesterday in a ferocious personal attack signalling Conservatives' determination to make "trust" a key issue in British politics again.
"Nobody believes him," the Tory leader charged as the British prime minister again defended his famous "red lines" and denied allegations he had broken a Labour manifesto pledge by refusing a referendum on the EU reform treaty.
Their first head-to-head Commons battle since July followed Mr Brown's U-turn over a November election and amid a torrent of newspaper headlines proclaiming "magpie" chancellor Alistair Darling's "smash and grab" raid on the Conservative Party's big ideas in Tuesday's financial statement.
Tory MP Robert Neill referred to his Tory-controlled local authority winning an award for its recycling efforts. Inviting Mr Brown to visit his constituency, Mr Neill quipped: "I could show him one of our bottle banks."
Mr Brown replied the MP should be pleased then with Tuesday's public spending settlement giving more money to the environment. But Tory MPs roared as Mr Cameron addressed Mr Brown's "credibility gap" over his decision not to call the election.
Mr Cameron mocked Mr Brown's earlier suggestion that he would have "made the same decision" even if the weekend opinion polls had pointed to a 100-seat Labour majority in a new parliament. "Does he expect anyone to believe that?" asked Mr Cameron. Mr Brown came out fighting, vowing he would "take no lessons" from a Tory leader who had changed his mind on supermarket parking charges, VAT on air fares, museum charges and grammar schools.
But Mr Cameron hit back, describing Mr Brown as "the first prime minister in history to flunk an election because he thought he was going to win it".
Then, deriding Mr Brown's recent book entitled Courage, the Tory leader asked: "Does he realise what a phoney he looks? Have you found a single person who believes your excuses for cancelling the election?"
When the prime minister noted that only 26 people had signed a Downing Street website petition calling for an election, the Tories pointed along the government front bench to underline that the election speculation had been fuelled by Mr Brown's key cabinet allies.
"I think he'll have to do better than that," said Mr Cameron, before asking directly if the chancellor's new policy to raise inheritance tax thresholds and levy non-domiciles had been in the draft pre-budget report written before last week's Conservative conference.
Mr Brown replied Mr Darling had talked about these issues in interviews in the summer and said he would welcome the debate about the Conservative alternative, repeating his claim that shadow chancellor George Osborne's figures contain a £2 billion-plus "black hole".
Mr Cameron countered that if the prime minister wanted to question Conservative plans he should "find a bit of courage, get a bit of bottle, get into his car, go down to Buckingham Palace and call that election".
Mocking Mr Brown's stated reason for delaying the election, Mr Cameron declared: "For 10 years you have plotted and schemed to have this job, and for what? No conviction, just calculation. No vision, just a vacuum."