BREXIT and laughter are not two words that are often found in the same sentence.

But a day after anger and acrimony erupted across the green benches of the House of Commons, the chance to combine the two arose after Michael Gove declared from the dispatch box that Labour’s Brexit plans were “bollocks”.

The Environment Secretary reminded MPs, during the second day of debate on Theresa May’s Brexit Plan, that fellow Scot, Barry Gardiner, the ebullient Shadow International Trade Secretary, had once described Labour’s position on Britain’s departure from the EU in the very same way.

Praising the Brent North MP's "truth and perfect clarity", Mr Gove said the Commons was grateful for how the Labour frontbencher had cast light on "the testicular nature" of Labour's six Brexit tests.

"He summed them up, pithily, in a word which in Spanish translates as 'cojones' and in English rhymes with rollocks,” explained the smirking Secretary of State to laughter.

"I know, Mr Speaker, there are some distinguished citizens in this country who have put on their cars a poster or sticker saying 'b******s to Brexit' but we now know from Labour's own frontbench that their official Brexit position is…bollocks."

The Surrey MP added: "I have to say that the Shadow International Trade Secretary is a jewel and an ornament to the Labour front bench.

"He speaks the truth with perfect clarity and in his description of Labour's own policy can I say across the House we're grateful to him, grateful to the Constant Gardiner for the way in which he has cast light on the testicular nature of Labour's position."

As titters echoed around the chamber, Sir Edward Davey for the Liberal Democrats jumped up to call a Point of Order, asking the Speaker if he had "made a new ruling on Parliamentary language which I am not aware of?"

John Bercow told MPs: "I have made no new ruling on parliamentary language and I was listening, as colleagues would expect, with my customary rapt attention to the observations of the Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

"I richly enjoyed those observations and particularly his exceptionally eloquent delivery of them, which I feel sure he must have been practising in front of the mirror for some significant hours.

"There's nothing disorderly - because a number of people were chuntering from a sedentary position that the use of the word beginning with B and ending in S, which the Secretary of State delighted in regaling the House with - was it orderly?

"Yes, there was nothing disorderly about the use of the word; it is a matter of taste."

It may be that from hereonin as tensions continue to rise that the pairing of Brexit and bollocks becomes a familiar refrain on the green benches.