WHILE hospitals burned in Ukraine, the Prime Minister’s ears burned in Saudi Arabia. He was the ghost at the feast in the House of Commons yesterday, as indeed were Mr Jeremy Corbyn (Lab) and Mr Paul Daniels (Not A Lot).

In Boris Johnson’s place was the Deputy PM, Dominic Raab, a quietly spoken chap of gentle demeanour (hiding the karate killer inside). Nice fella. Ineffectual but, given the choice, you’d rather your daughter married him than Boris.

However, just as the nice guy never gets the gal, he’ll never get the top political spot, certainly not while there’s an Angela to Rayner on his parade. Labour’s deputy leader ramps up the rhetoric compared to her boss, Keir Starmer, while Dominic ramps down Boris’s oratorical extravagances.

The result is usually a knock-out victory for Ms Rayner, but fair to say Big Raab, as he’d be known in Scotland, landed a couple of oi-zukis as Angela tried the old tongue fu.

Announced – “Angela Rayner!” – by the Speaker as if she were a contestant on Come On Down!, the Labour lassie kicked proceedings off by demanding a review of cases like that of Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe, newly released from Iran, including an assessment of whether the “lazy comments of the Prime Minister” had worsened her situation.

The Herald: Angela RaynerAngela Rayner

Advised not to give succour to despots by blaming everyone else for their actions, Angela switched attention to Russian oligarchs, asking Big Raab if he knew anything about warnings from the security services being overruled.

Naw, or words to that effect, said Big R, giving succour to the Prime Minister by saying it was the House of Lords who should be blamed for appointing Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia, the case at which Angela was hinting.

“Franky,” he added, like an exasperated teacher of an unruly child, “I think she should know better.”

He should have known better than to patronise Angela like this. In went her red Doc Martens: “It shouldn't matter if such a warning was about a close personal friend of the Prime Minister. It shouldn't matter if he gave the prime minister thousands of pounds of gifts. And it shouldn't matter how much champagne and caviar he serves.” Hmm, champagne and caviare. Tory mouths watered like Homer Simpson’s at the thought of beef jerky.

Raab, meanwhile, gave it the big kiai as he said no one had threatened Britain’s security as much as “the honourable gentleman for Islington North” – one Corbyn, J. – an army-abolishing, anti-nuke nut whom Angela had wanted for PM.

What about the current PM, asked Angela, going “cap in hand from one dictator to another” in a desperate attempt to “keep the lights on and pumps open”?

Mr Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was so pumped by the hullabaloo that he threatened to take one Tory MP outside. Shortly afterwards, he even interrupted well-mannered Mr Raab to warn him to stop “talking about history” – in this instance, recalling Mr Corbyn allegedly making excuses for Putin after the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

But Raab had landed a fumikomi on Angela and, for the first time, she looked rattled as Labour’s ghost came back to haunt her. However, she rallied with a headbutt about ministers cavorting with Russian oligarchs “in luxury villas while neglecting the security of the British people”.

They were neglecting Ukrainian orphans too, according to the SNP’s Westminster leader. Wearing a conspicuously green tie, the top Hibee complained that the Home Office was stymying the attempts of Dnipro Kids, a charity established by Hibs fans, to evacuate 48 children to Scotland.

A plane was ready and waiting in Poland to bring them, he said, but Home Office bureaucracy was preventing it from doing so.

Mr Raab said the “heart-rending situation” was caused not by bureaucracy but by “genuine safeguarding issues”.

Mince, said Mr Blackford (I’m paraphrasing again), adding: “This one case goes to the heart of the failure in the UK Government response to the biggest refugee crisis since World War Two.”

Line of the day, though, goes to Labour’s Matt Western who, noting that you can judge a person by the company he keeps, listed the PM’s associations with various Russians, before asking the Dep PM: “Can he therefore tell us what first attracted the Prime Minister to the billionaire Russian oligarchs?”

The jibe, recalling Mrs Merton’s question to conspicuously pretty Debbie McGee about what had attracted her to millionaire magic tricks entertainer Paul Daniel, understandably drew loud laughter that was for once merited.

Up in the gallery, four Ukrainian MPs watched proceedings. You had to wonder if they got all the jokes.