Westminster sketch: Boris fiddles while his ears burn and Labour go on a roll over Wallpapergate

The PM’s waddle into the chamber was greeted by a resumption of those braying hyah-hyahs that put decent Scottish teeth on edge. At least Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer didn’t join in that cuckoo chorus, focusing instead on Mr Johnson’s alleged remark about letting “the bodies pile high” during Covid, which the PM adamantly denied saying, before making his arguably more callous remark about Sir Keir being in the legal profession.

His point was that, being such, the Labour leader should have evidence to substantiate his allegation. Unfazed, Sir Keir proceeded to bring the second charge for the prosecution, relating to who had paid, “initially – the key word”, for the decoration of Boris’s Downing Street flat.

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Answering by the scenic route, Mr Johnson accused Sir Keir of having wanted to remain in the European Medicines Agency before reluctantly conceding an answer: “I paid for Downing Street refurbishment personally.” I think he meant “eventually”.

He added that most people would find it “absolutely bizarre” that Sir Keir was focusing on such matters, which he himself continued focusing on with a claim that the last Labour government had spent £500,000 on Downing Street refurbishments. To moans of disagreement, he insisted: “Yes, they did, tarting it up!”

Sir Keir averred: “This is a Prime Minister who, during the pandemic, was nipping out of meetings to choose wallpaper at £840 a roll.”

Boris: “He goes on and on about wallpaper which, as I’ve told him umpteen times now: I paid for it!” Possibly fed up or stressed out by the whole business, shortly afterwards a switch flipped in the Prime Minister’s brain and he started ranting in a markedly demented manner about Brexit “not only enabling us to take back our borders, and to deliver freedom”, but also “to deal with such threats as the European Super League”. Incredible. Somehow he had changed the subject to football. See? A consummate statesman.

After that load of balls, it was time to peek up the rhetorical kilt of SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, whose presbyterian tones of excoriation about the PM’s alleged recent “bodies” remark wreathed the chamber in doom.

Then out of the gloomy mists came this bombshell demand: “Can I ask the question: are you a liar, Prime Minister?” Ooh, dearie me. You can think it, mate. Not so sure about asking it.

Boris looked to the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, for help, and the latter duly adjudicated that, while the remarks were not technically out of order, “they were not savoury and not what we would expect”.

Ian Blackford (Image: PA)

When Mr Blackford came back with a line about “cash for curtains”, Boris eschewed the opportunity to talk at length about interior decor – already gets enough of that from his fiancée – and instead fell back on this old persiflage: “What we want to see is a Scottish nationalist government stop obsessing about breaking up our country, which is all they can think about and talk about.”

Poor old Mr Blackford hadn’t even mentioned such a thing. It seems to be a Tory hobby-horse, as was seen earlier at the complete waste of taxpayers’ money that is Scottish Questions, better known as the “Absolutely Agree Show” because that’s what the Scottish Secretary Alister “Union” Jack repeatedly replies to the series of Tory MPs for English constituencies who stand up to denounce “separatism”.

The only note of light relief came when Pete Wishart (SNP) suggested: “There’s only one surefire way for the Union to be strengthened and that’s to get the Prime Minister to Scotland on the campaign tail. The Secretary of State surely knows that there will be throngs of happy Scots rejoicing in his sleaze-free presence...”

Pete asked Union Jack if they could work on such an itinerary to help the Scottish Tories, but the Scottish Secretary said the PM’s diary was “not my concern”. Indeed not. That’s between Boris and his wallpaper supplier.

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Other questions came from the likes of John Howell (Con, Henley) – divisive referendum yada-yada – and Anthony Higginbotham (Con, Burnley), though it remains unclear if the latter is one of the Perthshire or Argyll Higginbothams.

It's unclear why the SNP give this Union propaganda half-hour credence by participating in it. If they’re serious about pulling out of Westminster, then they might as well start with what any impartial observer would surely agree is a bizarrely unrepresentative farce.

Which brings us back to Boris. And, as controversy continues over his hoose, what fun to have been a fly on the wallpaper at din-din times there last night.

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