Schools may be shut but at least one playground was busy

If you had the misfortune to commute to work or send your children to school yesterday, one thing would have been at the front of your mind: the impact of the strikes. Not so the House of Commons! In this topsy-turvy wonderworld, almost anything else was fair game, except the most obvious topic of all.

Sir Keir Starmer’s performance thus resembled the concussed attempts of Basil Fawlty not to “mention the war”. “Don’t mention the strikes” we can imagine the Leader of the Opposition hissing at his MPS before the session.

Starmer was in lawyer mode – lots of “who knew what, and when”. Was the PM “just too uncurious” to question press coverage about Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs, he asked? Sunak batted away all questions with a reference to the “independent ethics adviser”. “Oh come on!” huffed Starmer, prompting a chorus of Kenneth Williams-style “ooooohs”. Sunak looked sternly through his glasses at the opposing front bench like a very angry optician.

Next, Starmer shifted his attention to Dominic Raab – who was sitting next to Sunak. As Starmer spoke of the 24 allegations of bullying, the Deputy PM shuffled in his seat, looking pink-faced and peevish. “Not true,” he muttered.

The teachers might have been on strike, but Lindsay Hoyle presided with the air of a harassed deputy head bellowing at an amused class.

“I can certainly see your mouth moving Jonathan Gullis, it will be moving outside if it continues.”

Between this, and all the fingerjabbing and complaints of bullying, the atmosphere was very Year 3 schooltrip. The PM stuck to his customer service demeanour, although perhaps with a little more fire today.

He mentioned the treatment of Rosie Duffield, who’d described being a woman in the Labour Party as like “being in an abusive relationship” and, this being a day of the week that ends in “y”, Sunak also cited Starmer’s previous support of Jeremy Corbyn.

Moments later Liverpool firebrand Kim Johnson, a hangover from the cult of Jezza, rather proved the PM’S point by calling the Israeli government “fascist” and an “apartheid state”. She’d stumbled on yet another of the things Labour isn’t allowed to talk about: “I mentioned apartheid Israel once, but I think I got away with it!”

SNP leader Stephen Flynn delivered his weekly tirade with the air of a Sabbatarian minister from the Western Isles preaching a sermon adamantly opposed to the new Sunday ferry service. But his language was rather more colourful. “As the Brexit ship sinks with the Prime Minister at the helm,” he said, carefully mispronouncing this just enough so it sounded more like another four letter word beginning with “s”, which politicians are sometimes full of.

His predecessor, Ian Blackford, also had a question – his first since departing as the SNP’S Westminster leader. He rose to the biggest cheer of the afternoon, as the House erupted into ironic chants of “mooooore”. “He’s back,” someone yelled. Over on the SNP frontbench, conspirators-in-chief Flynn and Mhairi Black scowled at the floor. It was like watching a live-cam of Lord and Lady Macbeth as Banquo’s ghost wafts around the banquet hall.