THE only things missing were the big, bushy beard and the long stripey robe (I'm thinking Charlton Heston here) as the Gord wrought his terrible vengeance upon the cowering Conservatives and smote them very hard indeed.

From the mountain top of the backbenches, the ex-PM appeared. It has to be said the MP for Kirkcaldy is not a regular in these parts these days but he used the occasion to maximum impact, even quoting the Bible, to shame the Tories for suggesting English votes for English laws (EVEL) was the righteous path.

As the devolution debate unfolded the purveyors of EVEL increasingly disappeared into their green benches faced by the ex-PM jabbing his finger in their direction and growling his arguments in their ashen faces.

Having listened in a scowly silence to a series of English Tories, including the Yorkshire champion William Hague, rise to demand "fairness for England" ie banning Scottish MPs from certain debates, the big beast rose to deliver his fire and brimstone.

But hardly had Gordy got going when the SNP cohort jumped up and, to disbelief from the Labourites, made a point of order; namely, why on earth should a Socialist backbencher be one of the four MPs allowed unlimited time for their contribution when everyone else was limited to a mere six minutes.

Red Dawn, the Deputy Speaker, nose raised, ticked off the Nationalist champion Pete Wishart, mentioning how the Speaker's discretion on who got how long to speak was final. So there.

One Tory backbencher, in need of point-scoring, also interrupted proceedings asking if it was now the convention that those MPs who attended the Commons the least got to speak the most.

Gordy frowned and smote again, saying, to comradely laughter: "It's whether you talk sense in this House that matters."

But it was the ex-politician's biblical condemnation of EVEL that rattled the rafters.

"You cannot have one United Kingdom if you have two separate classes of MPs," roared the big beast. "You can't have representatives elected by the people who are half-in, half-out of the law-making process."

Then the son of the manse added: "Let us remember the words of the New Testament, in Mark, quoted by Lincoln; a house divided cannot stand and a house divided is wrought into desolation. That is the truth of what the Conservative Party are now proposing." So sayeth the Gord.

Was that a crack of thunder off in the distance?