“Wow” — that’s what one MP exclaimed when the vote on vaccine passports was declared. I said something more Anglo-Saxon.

The Government threw everything at winning Tuesday’s anti-Covid motions – Labour had its back. And even the omicron variant did its bit by turning Parliament into a petri dish – infecting so many MPs and putting the wind up others – that even super mask-sceptic Sir Des Swayne began the afternoon’s debate dressed like the invisible man, his silk scarf wrapped around his face as he sat down to listen to Sajid Javid do his level best to scare the living daylights out of his honourable friends.

One early sign of rebellion was that the Health Secretary couldn’t finish a sentence without an intervention from his own benches. Will Parliament be recalled if measures change? Mark Harper asked. Doesn’t South Africa suggest omicron might be mild, asked Greg Clark. The regulations will end on January 26, Saj protested. “What year?” shouted back Alec Shelbrooke.

I will take an intervention from Andrew Bridgen, said the minister wearily, “if he is really short”.

“The secretary of state knows I’ve been short all my life,” replied Mr Bridgen.

We need to be serious, Mr Javid reminded MPs. If we don’t act, children could die. It was an unsubtle point, and I’m not sure such rhetoric works. Earlier, Tory rebel Marcus Fysh had lowered the bar by comparing passports to Nazi Germany – a bit of tastelessness seized upon by Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow home secretary, as a damning indictment of Tory MPs who had lost their reason and decency.

Mr Streeting hates hyperbole. It’s the greatest evil in history and should be shot into the sun. He is Labour’s new model MP – deadly serious, free from ideology and ready for government, a point rammed home by opposition MPs giving him reviews normally read on West End billboards (“A tour de force,” said Meg Hillier. “It started off excellent and got better,” said Graham Stringer).

In fact, his speech was so long and boring that Peter Bottomley thought it was good – and one could see the scarf on Des’ face slowly slipping in frustration, beneath the nose and beneath the chin. At his moment to speak, he whisked it off with the proficiency of a Las Vegas stripper, and delivered a tirade against the regulations that told you what the backbenchers were really thinking. Hundreds die of flu every day of the winter! Are we going to allow this virus to change our way of life, to turn a free society into a nanny state absent of free choice or risk?