That’s the bit you’ll see on the telly, but otherwise he reassured the House, reeled off stats and rarely looked at his notes. How does he do it? He’s got his Henry Newman back, the special advisor sitting in the civil service box, recently sacked from No 10 and returned to Gove’s side. They are so intellectually simpatico that when they speak they sound identical. Young and handsome, you might say Henry is Dorian Gray, and Michael, his picture in the attic.

Of course, Dhesi wasn’t calling Britain ungenerous, just the Government, and as Kevin Brennan pointed out, Ireland has a much smaller population than us yet has taken “three times” as many Ukrainians.

There are, admitted Gove, already 14,000 Afghans living here in hotels, which implies local government is stretched; the SNP’s Patricia Gibson noted that “3,000 plus” offers of private rooms for their use have not been taken up. Labour suspects this scheme is not a grand act of charity but a Government out of its depth asking the citizens to do what the state cannot – and a couple of Tory MPs dared to ask, will the refugees have tenancy rights? What if the relationship breaks down? Previous schemes have been overwhelmingly positive, said Gove, which is nice.

Maybe we can get him on this, thought Labour: a tweet by journalist Paul Brand saying that the refugee website had already crashed. Mike Kane was tasked to ask, assuming it would humiliate the minister – but Gove replied that while he was sorry Mr Brand’s internet is so poor, not only was the website running but Alicia Kearns MP had just this minute signed up to it, and Ms Kearns nodded passionately in affirmation.

The look on some MP’s faces was pure dread. The whip will be telling *them* to do it next. If they weren’t praying for a swift end to hostilities before, they are now.