INFORMED readers will know that, during the parliamentary session at yonder Westminster, there’s a weekly event called Questions To The Prime Minister. Many disloyal citizens would prefer this was Questions About The Prime Minister.

But there it is. The opposition leaders make big speeches with little questions attached. The Prime Minister responds with three-word slogans. There follows a hullaballoo.

Yep, the hullaballoo was back at the House of Commons yesterday. Buttock by buttock they jammed themselves onto the green benches, the left-wing opposition MPs wearing masks, the right-wing reigning Tories eschewing same.

Does this tell us anything? The left just love a good old restriction? The right love freedom and to cut loose against stuffy convention?

No, it’s just everyone following their pack. I suppose it was good to see the place packed again. As with the football, PMQs is nothing without the atmosphere, the hooliganism, the groaning and the cheering.

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Mr Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was like a European referee blowing his whistle at anything and everything but, as he said, it was necessary to silence the repeated rammies and hear what was going on. He said that’s what the people wanted. All three of them that take an interest.

Some say power has gone to Boris Johnson’s head. But it’s worse than that. A hairdresser has also gone there. On Tuesday, he emerged with a much tidier, block-headed look, which was disconcerting: like seeing Elvis without his quiff or Margaret Thatcher with a No1 buzzcut.

Yesterday, he’d tried tousling up what was left of it again, nurturing anew his inner punk and sending a message to his fans that he would never surrender to The Man.

The Man opposite, Sir Keir Starmer, has a head full of hair gel and cunning, lawyerly questions designed to unhinge a Prime Minister who has never been quite hinged. The Labour leader’s chosen battleground was the looming National Insurance (NI) hike to pay for social care and bail out the NHS. This is a hill on which Boris seems willing to die, so there was no chance of a truce as Sir Keir complained about “an unfair tax on working people”, and reminded Boris that he’d once (in 2002) described NI increases as “regressive”.

Mr Johnson donned an imaginary chef’s hat and waved a spatula to rouse the rabble behind as he declared: “Out of that minestrone of nonsense has floated a crouton of fact.” That fact need not detain us any more than it did Mr Johnson, who went from soup to nuts as he blustered: “They believe in welfare. We believe in higher wages and higher skills and better jobs.”

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To recap: the Conservatives are the party of the NHS and higher wages. By this time, the chamber was starting to go all swirly, and I feared that someone had dropped a tab of acid into my lunchtime Malibu. All it needed now was Labour to turn into a metropolitan elite with little support among the working class.

Actually, at least Rosie still backs Labour. A minimum wage nursing home worker, she’d told Sir Keir how she’d suffer financially when the NI rises came in. Alas, this caused the Tory mask to slip. They laughed. To be fair, this tittering may have started at something earlier, but all the same a furious Mr Starmer was able to storm: “What does the laughter say to Rosie?”

Speaking of laughs, the SNP’s Westminster leader rose ominously like a Black Cuillin out of the Skye mist to speak up for “Scottish workers” and “Scottish families”. I could be wrong but I think he was trying to make some point about Scotland. This was confirmed when he concluded: “Scotland deserves better!” Well, it’s arguable, I suppose.

Mr Johnson appeared none the worse for this onslaught. Clearly, he takes the SNP seriously by going out of his way not to take them seriously, still getting their name wrong, still saying “All they can do is talk about another referendum”, when he’s the only one so doing.

I should say that PMQs is not just about the three giants of statesmanship mentioned above. Other MPs get a chance to orate. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey made a good speech on behalf of unpaid carers, of which he is one himself. Neale Hanvey (Alba), reading from his mobile phone, said a £1,000 cut in annual Universal Credit meant a lot to the poor, even if it would barely pay for a single roll of wallpaper for the PM’s Downing Street flat.

As usual, a succession of Tory MPs invited the PM to visit their delightfully fragrant Home Counties constituencies, with one catching Boris on the hop with an unexpected invitation to a drinks reception (for St John’s ambulance workers) immediately after the show.

Boris stuttered that he couldn’t make it but wished them all the best. And so we take our leave of this, the best of all possible parliaments. I’m sorry. That’s the acid-spiked Malibu talking again.

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