ACCORDING to my researchers, Christmas is coming. It’s some kind of festival. So festive jollity at the year’s final Prime Minister’s Questions was to be expected, even if it was mostly smothered in seasonal snowstorms of discord.

Against a background of Yuletide strikes, Scrooge and Cratchit faced each other across the Dispatch Box, accusing each other of being weak.

This macho malarkey isn’t cutting it. Neither Rishi Sunak, a Prime Minister, nor Keir Starmer, Labour leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, seems particularly thuggish, lacking the skinhead mien of SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, for example.

If you met Keir or Rishi in a dark alley, you’d probably pat them on the head. Stephen would make you turn about rapidly and seek another route.

With Rishi and Keir, PMQs has become Field Mouse Wars. It’s political MMA: Mixed Milksops Arguing. Yesterday, it was about the nurses’ strike in Englandshire. It was the first ever “nationwide” nurses’ strike, said Sir Keir, getting his Englands and Britains mixed up. Again.

All the PM need do was “open the door” and invite the nurses in, averred Sir K, aware of Mr Sunak’s reputation for sitting in the hoose and rarely showing his face. Mr Starmer said the strike was “a badge of shame for this Government”. And that’s a pretty packed lapel.

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Rishi said his mob had “consistently spoken” to all unions involved in pay disputes. All unions: “No, you effing haven’t.” The PM said “getting round the table” was just just a political formula for not taking a stance. Why, for example, didn’t the bold Sir K say whether he thought 19% pay demands were right?

It was because the Labour leader was just “not strong enough to stand up to the unions”, said Rishi, his field mouse whiskers quivering.

There followed a hullaballoo. Mr Speaker: “We know it’s Christmas but the party hasn’t started yet.”

Sir Keir said Rishi lacked “the guts” to scrap non-dom status and use the money to pay the nurses. He was “too weak”. More gunslinger posturing. What next? Spitting tobacco juice into the dust and rasping in a sandpaper voice: “Git offa ya hoss and face me, field mouse to field mouse”?

The PM said working people were facing “Labour’s nightmare before Christmas”. This Tory Government is the champion of working people, apart from those on strike, which is nearly all of them.

Voices off were hollering, forcing the Speaker to promise one Tory backbencher “a Christmas present you wouldn’t want”. Meanwhile, Keir accused Rishi of having “curled up into a ball”.

Balls, is it? Here’s balls. And I’ll knee yours, ya slavers. That’s an exclusive revelation from the thoughts of aforementioned skinhead Flynn, as he rose to speak, twanging his braces and hitching his Sta Prest troosers over his cherry red Doc Marten boots.

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The SNP man said “positive and pro-active” negotiations between the Scottish Government and health unions had seen a pay settlement reached and strike action averted. Might the PM “see the error of his ways and follow the Scottish Government’s example”? Nope. Rishi said the Scottish Government was only able to pay the nurses because of all the money it got from London. At this point, it’s incumbent on your correspondent to provide context for these debates. English schtick is this: We are unappreciated, benevolent angels whose generosity to you is unbounded. Yet you whinge endlessly like trampled bagpipes. Please don’t go. We need the oil, whisky, fishing and tourism revenues.

Scottish schtick is this: We are nicer people than you and do things better. We’d be the bestest country in the world if only we had the power. So, we’re going. Good luck with revenues from your garden gnome manufacturing base.

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Stamping his DMs all over these porcelain pixies, Mr Flynn said the PM’s words would “ring hollow” in the ears of folk who, unlike Rishi, couldn’t just turn on their heating as easily as he might “nip into Waitrose”. Scots, he added, were “genuinely terrified” of their energy bills. Oops, there goes the tough Caledonian image.

And this was despite the fact that Scotland produces six times more gas than it consumes. Scotland, thundered Stephen, has the energy. “We just need the power.”

But we end on a festive note, with Labour member Dame Angela Eagle’s version of The Twelve Days of Christmas: “This year, the Tory Party has given us five education secretaries, four chancellors, three prime ministers, two leadership coups, and the partridge has had to sell the pear tree to pay the gas bill.” Loud merriment and pulling of crackers all round!

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