Everyone raises their game in an all-new PMQS

Cast your mind back to the last Prime Minister’s Questions. Jeremy Corbyn gave a typically scattergun performance in front of rows of silent, stony-faced Labour MPS.

Hunched over the dispatch box, the Prime Minister, still recognisably human before her transformation into the Maybot, crowed: “Every vote for me is a vote for strong and stable leadership in the national interest.”

That was eight weeks ago.

MPS resumed their places yesterday but nothing

was same. The DUP were on the opposition benches but when Ian Paisley Jr asked for “assurances” that a postbrexit soft border with the Republic won’t an “unsafe border”, it didn’t sound like a request. It sounded like “stick it on my tab”.

Corbyn had the confidence and authority at the dispatch box of someone no longer wondering whether he was showing his back to his enemies. He marshalled an argument with detailed questions about the Grenfell disaster before unleashing it on the Prime Minister, claiming the fire exposed “the disastrous effects of austerity”.

Every bit of the Labour machine hums with a new energy, as if someone has remembered to plug it into the mains.

It was the first PMQS for new SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, so he eased himself by calling for David Mundell’s resignation. His lofty ambition has more to do with boosting morale among the diminished Nationalist MPS, but he was brought to earth by a wall of noise protecting Mundell.

Angus Robertson enjoyed a hushed silence at PMQS as MPS of parties, dismayed at Corbyn’s efforts, looked forward to some real opposition from the SNP. If the Labour leader is going to make a habit of doing his job, then Blackford might be frustrated.

There was more innovation as Scottish Conservative backbenchers tried to make up for a 20-year absence.

Barracking in the House of Commons is mostly laid back, no more than a gentle bovine lowing. Former MSPS John Lamont and Douglas Ross, who have transported their running club to London, bring a higher category of effort.

Their athletic, red-faced, limb-pumping display of finger jabbing at every SNP question caught attention.