Does Ed Miliband need a makeover? The coalition is about to vandalise the NHS after undermining education. But Miliband isn't really dominating the stage.
Are his Commons performances showing enough passion? Is he winning over the audience?
Since the Labour leader announced last year that he was starting with a "blank sheet of paper," Miliband has faced growing criticism of his leadership style.
So maybe he needs the treatment Natalie Portman gets in her latest movie The Black Swan.
Does Labour need to hire some Svengali to whisper into his ear "The only person standing in your way is you!" Someone to come over all moody and intense like Vincent Cassel, putting Miliband through his paces with throaty exhortations that "this is your moment, Ed. Don't let it go. You could be brilliant, but you're a coward."
I don't know what Miliband's new spin doctor Tom Baldwin has been telling him, but you could see him borrowing some phrases from The Black Swan to pep up his parliamentary performance - "Come on! Forget about control, Ed! I wanna see passion! Come on! Reach! You're stiff! Stiff like a dead corpse! Let it go! Let it go! Let it go!"
And there is no doubt that David Cameron will be at least temporarily fuddled if the next time he looks over the despatch box Miliband is in full Portman-mascara-mode, while Gordon Brown weeps in the background: "This role is destroying you! Where is my sweet former special adviser?"
But the real problem isn't about presentation, it is about politics. Ed M is a prisoner of new Labour. Loads of the old "new" gang are in the shadow cabinet, reflecting the way loads of David Miliband supporters fill the Labour benches.
The impresarios behind light-touch banking regulation, NHS contracting-out, "crackdowns" on disability benefits, military adventures and other absurd dances new Labour staged before the audience booed them off still sit as Labour MPs.
And they are all stopping him making dramatic moves against Cameron. Even when Miliband has a go at Cameron over bankers' bonuses, NHS privatisation or student loans, Cameron can point to the Labour roots of these policies.
And his own shadow cabinet agrees. Alan Johnson, when not embarrassing himself and his party with his ignorance, is pushing a "cuts are good, tax is bad" line.
Douglas Alexander is talking about being "tough and sustained" on spending - not on the banks.
All this leaves Miliband Mili-bland. There is nothing wrong with having slicker PR, but Miliband really needs more substantial politics.
He won the leadership in a partial rejection of new Labour, but Provisional New Labour wants to drag him back to the right.
Labour won in Oldham because of issues that protesters pushed to the fore - student loans, bankers' bonuses, Tory cuts. But the shadow cabinet wants him to talk the same old new Labour - tough on spending, soft on big-business stuff.
Some praise in liberal circles for our new Home Secretary Ken Clarke. In part this shows how bad Jack Straw was - new Labour's punitive stance makes Clarke's plans to close prisons look good.
But a lot of the praise is being sung because commentators don't understand the real madness of Clarke's probation plans.
The Home Secretary wants to free prisoners, but he also wants to create a market in crime, with criminal futures turned into tradeable bonds sold on the world's exchanges.
Clarke wants fewer people in prison, which is good, but he wants to hand them over to privatised probation services, which is very bad.
In the foreword to his white paper, Clarke proposes the widespread privatisation of probation services, saying: "We expect that independent providers, backed up by ethical investment, will support the early stages of this rehabilitation revolution."
This will be run on "payment by results" - but don't think that this means money will be saved.
Private providers will have to front up the cash for probation. They will then be paid depending on how many or few of their clients commit crimes.
However, because they are putting the money up in advance, they can demand a higher rate of return - up to 8 per cent.
This "social impact bond" model, which is also going to be used in workfare and welfare, is a new version of PFI, where supposedly "efficient" private companies and banks run public services for long-term profits.
I got a glimpse of these plans at the last Tory conference in a meeting paid for by private contractor Group 4.
Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt claimed that these new bonds were exciting, "rather like privatisation in the '80s we may find something that leads the world."
Blunt admitted that there were dangers, including the possibility that "investors end up taking the public sector to the cleaners because they find a model that always pays out."
However, given that Blunt was speaking on a Group 4 platform next to its "offender management" boss Jerry Petherick, the minister seemed unconcerned about the long record of private-sector failure in this field.
Blunt argued that the public needed to change its "attitude to risk" to make these schemes work. Blunt said that "one theme I want to pick up, it's risk," saying that the "extremely risk-averse attitude to safety and security" was a problem and that "we must delegate and not overcomplicate it with public accountability or we will throttle it."
Blunt suggested that if he could attract big investors, these City geniuses would, through the magical efficiency of the money men, be able to hire the best rehabilitation experts.
The model was a group of financiers investing in faith-based charities to rehabilitate prisoners - the financiers got a profit, the charity gets to spread its word and society gets to solve the crime problem.
This bizarre dream is more likely to turn into a nightmare where already threadbare probation services are closed while privatisation leads to rip-off profits for the City men and amateur fanatics looking after ex-prisoners.
