Sight at dispatch box is throwback to eighties

Blink, and you are back in the 1980s.

There are the pearls – slightly bigger perhaps – and the Aquascutum suits.

Then there is the rhetoric – aspirational, fair and stern.

The topics – plural, because Corbyn seems unable to ever stick to just one subject – even included the right to buy.

Across the dispatch box, a wiry old socialist is jeered by his own MPs as much as the Conservative benches.

Labour even faces the prospect of splitting.

Thankfully we are not at war with Argentina over some tiny islands in the South Atlantic.

But otherwise this was textbook Thatcher versus Foot.

Theresa May, facing her first prime minister’s questions, looked every bit a 21st-century Iron Lady, even if there was some rust in her performance.

The former home secretary – who is no stranger to the dispatch box – spoke largely without notes, occasional stumbles not detracting from what was an assured performance.

Her only blunder came when she followed the jeers of her MPs into an ill-judged attack on the embattled Corbyn.

Of course, he was a silly fool for raising the issue of ‘job security’ when he himself is, quite possibly, on the brink of being handed his P45. As the braying guffaws reached a high-pitch from the Tories behind her, May could not resist skewering the Labour leader on his gaffe.

But it was just mildly amusing and ultimately rather tasteless given job security is not a joke for most people – other, perhaps, than Tory and Labour backbenches.

The Iron Lady would not have made such a mistake. Yet, like Thatcher, May knows she will actually have to do little other than let Labour destroy itself.

As the prime minister remarked that she hoped she and Corbyn would face each other for “many years”, a flicker of a grin appeared on her lips.

Like Thatcher versus Foot, she knows May versus Corbyn can only end one way. If Corbyn is usurped by Owen Smith then Labour will have their first Welsh leader since – err – Neil Kinnock.

Yes, either way you are back to the 1980s. Perhaps it is best to keep your eyes shut.

“Ultimately tasteless given job security is not a joke for most people”