Well, it's still a jungle, that's for sure.

Braying, baying, grunting, squealing. Still a habitat where uninhibited, ill- disciplined, adolescent behaviour patterns can be observed by any passing anthropologist. Still prone to sudden, bloody attacks as snarling bullies lunge at the weakest points of their whimpering prey.

But what Prime Minister's Question time in particular, and the House of Commons in general, so obviously lack is anything resembling proper big beasts. Frankly, David Attenborough on a televised expedition would have a pretty thin time of it.

In evidence, I invite you to examine the pack leaders and principal lieutenants of the contemporary species. Observe, if you will, the chameleon called Cameron, serially changing his policy wardrobe to reduce the threat from any new predator on his patch. Watch him try to avoid onrushing ambush by darting nimbly to the right.

See him sweat and his visage glow strangely pink when he perceives that a supposedly inferior breed has punctured his armour; in which regard he bears an odd resemblance to the Balls creature, another puffed-up Commons dweller the depth of whose anger is easily visible by the rising tide of facial red tones.

Or how about Miliband, the mouse that fails to quite roar no matter how much adrenalin is pumped round his slight frame. Think of Osborne, a wolverine type and master of the serial smirk. Or Duncan Smith, salivating at the very thought of inflicting more pain on unprotected smaller species.

Wonder as you surely must at how Alexander, the partially evolved Scottish wildcat, has been allowed to roam the Treasury corridors at will, surely proof that even the animal kingdom is subject to the Peter Principle.

The females of the species, Harman the lonely lioness and May the Teflon-coated panther, are only irregularly permitted to participate in parliamentary ritual slaughters lest they get ideas above their departmental station. Good God, look what's happened north of Hadrian's wall.

All in truth are sorry inhabitants of a kingdom that used to boast magnificent mammals of true stature.

Oddly, the nearest thing we have in contemporary Commons life are two men who have essentially left the stage: Ken Clarke, the great survivor, finally given his jotters by a leader hardly fit to tie the laces of his infamous suede brogues, and Gordon Brown whose searing cameo in the final act of the referendum campaign reminded us what a powerful orator he can still be, and just what an unstoppable force of nature he has been, as many of his erstwhile departmental victims can ruefully testify.

That duo represent the tail end of an era boasting politicians who commanded the House and external respect with equal facility. It's not just Scottish partiality that makes me mourn the likes of Smith and Cook whose arrival at the dispatch box could empty bars.

Seasoned debaters, they knew the value of humour and mockery to successful oratory; ingredients now replaced by cheap insults and laboured scripting. What has also been largely lost are men and women with a proper cultural hinterland gleaned from a life outside the political arena: parliamentarians who could effortlessly imbue their speeches with apt literary references or deadpan humour. Men such as Healey and Dewar; or, on the Tory side, Alan Clark and Julian Critchley

Sometimes of course that wasn't quite enough, at least not under the harsh spotlight trained on leadership. The cultured yachtsman Edward Heath, a highly accomplished musician, gave dullness a bad name in his political utterances.

Michael Foot, whose wit and learning regularly lit up the Commons, was reduced to a figure of ridicule outside as he spectacularly failed to play the media game; but, surely, giants compared with some of the pygmies who succeeded them.

Much depends of course on how you choose to measure stature. As his allies never tire of reminding us, Tony Blair managed to turn the Labour Party into a natural party of government with three general election notches on his bedpost. But the critic who dismissed him as "veneer all through" didn't seem to me too wide of the mark in terms of personal integrity.

Whatever the merits of his faith foundation it is not for that he is destined to be remembered. Even setting aside the still gaping wound of Iraq, a Labour premier whose most evident post office skill set is amassing a colossal personal fortune would seem to be falling more than a little short in the values department.

And now we find ourselves in a very strange world indeed where tranches of the electorate have persuaded themselves that their political hero of choice is Nigel Farage, a lightweight poseur whose cheery chappie persona belies an instinct acute enough to have shaken down the institution he affects to loathe for many millions of euros.

Nigel is most assuredly not a big beast; nor will he become one, however the dice fall next May. And I predict they will not fall well for a party that will not prosper as it hopes under the media scrutiny of a full-blown campaign in a general rather than a European election. Even now the candidates are falling faster than the skittles in his local as some of their more unsavoury views become public.

Ukip's Scottish tribe has long fallen prey to internecine warfare, which helps explain why they had to import from London for their European candidate, who contrived to succeed in a sea of general indifference. Would that he had risen without trace, but his public utterances bear all the hallmarks of a party whose knee-jerk bigotry is matched only by its ignorance.

It may be that the comparative lack of contemporary figures to revere and admire is what has propelled so many electors into the arms of informal political groupings, so many of which were born and thrived in the hothouse atmosphere of this year's referendum campaign.

Some of these will fade with the disappearance of their central focus. Others will regroup and harness their newfound political energy in other directions, not least at community level. But, noticeably, very few of their denizens seem attracted by formal politics, least of all in the uncivilised bear pit of the Commons.

It many be that Jim Murphy, yet to share with us his intentions as to whether or not to stand again in Renfrewshire, has concluded that the centre of political gravity for many Scots no longer lies in London.

Strikingly, and for the first time, none of the current Holyrood parliamentary leaders has the Commons on their cv.

The more power is wielded in that forum, the less relevant Westminster becomes to the day-to-day concerns of Scottish voters, the more Scots may follow his example.

And, in truth, it has been a long time since the cohort of Scottish MPs not featuring in a cabinet or its shadow can pretend to be earning their corn. And, given the onward march of the English Votes for English Laws empire, it's difficult to conceive of a future where any post of any consequence will be handed to an MP sitting north of Berwick