Labour expended a lot of energy yesterday attempting to paint David Cameron as a series of damning pen portraits.

Out of touch, “nasty”, with a problem with women, it was quite the concerted effort. 

They need not have bothered. The Prime Minister himself proudly appeared to present himself as a toff.

Asked about the abandonment of his plans to scrap the fox hunting ban, Mr Cameron did nothing to contradict those who depict him in that red blazer on top of the horse chasing, to the bitter end, the poor defenceless fox.

He appeared to fix Labour leader Ed Miliband with a large smile and a glint in his eye, as he replied to a question on fox hunting saying: “I have never broken the law and the only little red pests that I pursue these days are in this house.”

The Prime Minister was being pushed on the fox hunting commitment because Labour wanted to know whether it would appear in his Government’s “failure audit”.

Mr Cameron was not impressed. His Government was open, he said. It was transparent, and committed to putting more information in the public domain than Labour had ever done.

Which is why of course one of his key advisers was photographed walking down Downing Street earlier this week holding a document that said that the audit identified “problematic areas”, would lead to “unfavourable copy” highlighting “broken pledges”.

The document also suggested it could be quietly “published without fanfare” online to avoid overshadowing the Government’s relaunch earlier this week.

You remember the one. It was overshadowed by the announcement that one of the Coalition’s ministers in the Lords was resigning. Closely followed another 24 hours later by another minister in the Lords also standing down.

Well, at least the Coalition is good at making predictions.