David Cameron rightly looked angry in the House of Commons yesterday that a child of 17 months had been savagely killed. But did he have to sound so angry?
It was an unstatesman-like performance from someone who hopes to be the next prime minister, although few MPs in the chamber during yesterday's scenes came out with any credit.
Gordon Brown accused the Tory leader of bringing "party politics" into the debate, and there was something about Cameron's demeanour that left him open to charges of opportunism.
The advantage that Brown has is his dourness and sounds much the same at times like this as he would should Labour win a landslide at the next general election.
So eager was Cameron to make gibes at the Labour front bench that he even managed to get the age of the mother wrong, 17 instead of 27. Perhaps in his haste he had "broken Britain" on his mind. I wonder how many TV viewers watching Cameron erroneously harrumphed, "teenage mothers".
In the same outburst, Cameron fired a salvo at Haringey's children's services, a department that commands a £100m a year budget set by a Labour council.
Curiously, there was no similar anger directed towards the health professionals who somehow missed the evidence of the beatings suffered by Baby P. Then again, social services departments always have been easy pickings for the political Right.
As MPs traded braying noises with each other, it was left to the Speaker, Michael Martin, to bring them to heel and point out - because by this time it needed to be - the severity of the case.
At last some decency and commonsense.
Yesterday's rowdyism was not only about MPs' concern for child protection. It was about party leaders and their disdain for each other. The Baby P tragedy should have been foremost in the debate; in the end it became peripheral.
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