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In her spangly leopard-print dress, Lucy Powell had come to Business Questions dressed as Kat Slater. With hammed-up working-class accents, endless conflicts and yet an inexplicable popularity amongst the general public, the twin soap operas of the Labour Party and EastEnders have a great deal in common.
Penny Mordaunt, by contrast, wore a pussy-bow blouse worthy of Mrs Thatcher. If only the current Conservative Party could claim it had much in common with the Iron Lady, beyond the fact that she too is, unfortunately, deceased.
Powell began by tearing into the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Rwanda scheme. She did this just a little too gleefully. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that Labour were pleased about open borders and uncontrolled migration – surely not?
But like the boy on the burning deck in the poem Casabianca – Ms Morduant will understand this reference, being a fan of the nautical and also the not-very subtle – the Leader of the House stood calm and batted away question after question, whence all but she had fled.
Sir Ben Bradshaw – self-appointed grandee for God and gays – unfurled himself into an upright position to ask Ms Mordaunt about conversion therapy, in which he purred that the Leader of the House was “one of the angels”. It was refreshing to see that they were on the same side.
Deidre Brock, the Scottish Nationalist representative at this particular jamboree, began her weekly sally with a lecture on malicious communications – referencing Suella Braverman’s resignation and “all those letters and emails” cascading through the Conservative Party. In fairness, they might be malign, but at least they’re publicly available – unlike the WhatsApps of the SNP leadership.
Brock puffed herself up in classic SNP-style, as its members tend to do before another bout of embarrassment. She listed the manifold wickednesses of the Conservative Government and reeled off things that were apparently working brilliantly in Scotland – teachers being paid more, trains in public ownership etc. She omitted mentioning their world record for drug abuse.
Meanwhile, Ms Mordaunt sat, smirking and waiting for her moment to pounce. It was a smirk that foretold carnage.
“I grow tired each week,” she said, “of reading out statistics to her about the performance of the Scottish Government.” This was a lie – not since Richard Nixon was “not a crook” and Bill Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman” has deceit in politics reached such a high.
Next, Ms Mordaunt turned her ire on the SNP’s Westminster leader, the cracked boiled egg Stephen Flynn – who’d spent Remembrance Sunday slouching with his wreath.
“If I refused to answer the Hon Lady’s question,” said Ms Mordaunt, “if I were not prepared to show respect to this House … it would be a bit like attending the Cenotaph and not singing the national anthem.”
As her magnificently nautical broadside proved, the Leader of the Commons is one of the few remaining Cabinet ministers who can still score substantive hits off the opposition.
However, that the deck on which she so bravely stands remains burning is hard to deny.
As the Tory ship sinks, Penny Mordaunt still has the wind in her sails
Amid chaos in the Conservative Party, Leader of the House is one of the few able to score points off her opponents