“Mooooore!” brayed the Tory backbenchers, particularly restive today. “Well some people won’t be getting more, since they won’t be here to hear it”, snapped Hoyle. The “no treacle tart until you’ve finished your Brussels sprouts” energy was unmistakable, and his peevishness set the tone for what followed.

The PM was flanked by his loyal line up of “heavies” – nodding Nadine, Priti Patel, all busily shushing Labour hecklers. Chief Whip Mark Spencer glowered menacingly on the corner, like a club bouncer faced with a teenager’s dodgy fake ID. A few rows behind sat Theresa May, conspicuously masked in a sea of naked faces.

Keir Starmer had reprised an evergreen role – the pious, goody-two-shoes. It’s “time to restore some dignity to politics”, he bleated, keen to show a Very Serious Politician was speaking. But a little of this can go a long way.

Starmer’s tirade proves own goal

Earlier in the week the PM, flailing around desperately for a diversion from Gray-day, had accused Starmer of failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile while serving as DPP. And on Wednesday, Sir Keir launched into a furious tirade accusing Johnson of “parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists”. His annoyance was understandable – and yet further talk of it proved an own goal: guaranteeing more headlines and welding together the words “Starmer” and “Savile” in the public consciousness. And in the process he overlooked several blue rosetted elephants in the Chamber – those Tory MPs who’d publicly called for the PM’s resignation since then.

Starmer had more joy with the economy. “Why do these alleged tax cutters keep raising taxes on working people?”, he asked. The PM had no good answer; for some time Tory tax cutting has been more a matter of self-identification than physical reality. Again and again, the PM and his ministers will say they are “emotionally committed” to lowering taxes while raising them, or babble on about the small state while enlarging it. As Starmer clobbered the trans-Thatcherites, the PM could only revert to his tried and tested formula: youth unemployment, the booster rollout, yardy yardy-ya. A little of this can go a long way too.

“Isn’t it the case that the PM and his chancellor are the Tory Thelma and Louise, hand-in-hand, as they drive the country off the cliff?” sniggered Sir Keir, chuckling at his own joke. The PM hit back, rewarded with a gale of guffaws as he compared Starmer and Deputy Angela Rayner to “Dastardly and Muttley” (but which one was sitting in the driver’s seat?)

The trouble with this was that Dastardly and Muttley never won a race, while from this angle, it was the Tory car that seemed to be pouring smoke at the side of the road. But perhaps the PM’s true Wacky Races avatar was “Peter Perfect” – the puffed up blond given to bragging about the many virtues of his hi-tech race car, seconds before it falls to pieces.