Defections between the two main parties are rare. As a consequence, they are significant.

The last Conservative defection to the Labour Party was nearly 15 years ago, when Quentin Davies, who represented Grantham and Stamford, crossed the floor the day before Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair at Number 10 – a repudiation of Blair as much as an endorsement of the new prime minister.

That topped off a series of one-way defections in the Blair era that had cost the Conservatives five of their number, not including others who chose the Liberal Democrats as their preferred destination. During the Miliband and Corbyn eras, the supply of unhappy Tories seeking a Labour membership card dried up, unsurprisingly.

Today the tap was turned back on, with the extraordinary decision by Christian Wakeford, the Bury South MP, to join the Labour Party. He will be accused by some of opportunism, even of cynicism – he won the seat in 2019, after all, with a hairsbreadth majority of just 402. But turning your back on your party takes guts and has devastating political as well as social consequences. Which is why such defections are so rare and why he should be respected for his courage.

Comrade Wakeford made his debut in the chamber, inevitably, just a couple of minutes before Prime Minister’s Questions was due to start. The chamber was already in a febrile state, given the swirling rumours of whether enough letters had been submitted to the chair of the ’22 to trigger a confidence vote in Boris Johnson. Wakeford, having publicly stated he had written one, will now have his shredded, since letters from Labour MPs don’t count.

He sat directly behind the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer. Of course he did. The Prime Minister would then have his former colleague in his eye line whenever he rose to answer any of Starmer’s questions. 

The Labour leader began, as was expected, by welcoming his new recruit to the Labour benches, and making the significant political point that “the Labour Party has changed, and so has the Conservative Party.” There are few more powerful examples of the turning of the political tide than a parliamentary defection: if Labour is safe territory for a Tory MP, why not former Tory voters?

Given the context of the session, it would have been logical to assume that Johnson would affect his now familiar penitent act, offering humility and apologies as he has done over the past week. Maybe he just got tired of that schtick. Whatever his reasoning, the return of the familiar rumbunctious Johnson went down a storm on his own benches. Oddly, it may well have been Wakeford’s defection that helped unite Conservative MPs; they may not be as enthusiastic about Johnson’s leadership as they once were, but they can at least unite in loathing for a traitor.

Starmer upped his game too: he actually seemed to be enjoying himself, reciting all those questions that he has undoubtedly been turning over in his sleep since last Wednesday. They were all relevant and difficult for Johnson to answer. The Prime Minister got round this obstacle by simply not answering them. His efforts to deflect attention from his packed social calendar to his Government’s success in fighting Covid and restoring economic growth didn’t convince anyone, but his troops loved it. And today, reassuring them that he still had some fight in him was the most important job at hand.

Even the Speaker had a good session, pausing the session at one point to ask an unidentified Member if he/she was referring to him when he/she shouted “Apologise!” Of course, Speaker Hoyle knew damn well that the remark was aimed at one of the two party leaders, but it gave us all a glorious glimpse of his Robert DeNiro “Are you talking to me?” impression. And it was suitably scary.

Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, had less of a good day, since his high-pitched outrage could have been performed on any day in the last five years. His repetitive condemnation of the Government (and of pretty much everything other than the SNP) has had the ironic effect of acting like booster jabs on his parliamentary colleagues. Parliament has at last developed herd immunity to the charms of Ian Blackford.

Thanks to the ongoing partygate scandal and the defection of one of his own MPs, this has been a very bad day for the Prime Minister, but it could have been worse. Those same reasons have made it a very good day for Keir Starmer, though it could have been better.

It wasn’t a particularly good day for Blackford, but then I suppose no day is a good day when you’re living under the English yoke. Perhaps the best day of all has been had by the Speaker, whose management of these events, however torrid they tend to be, was masterful.