Imagine a school assembly run by the most boring narcissists imaginable. Right – you’ve come close to picturing the first parliamentary business questions after recess.

Lucy ‘Paraffin’ Powell, the woman who can always make a bad situation worse, began with a list of all the MPs who had married, had children, or otherwise managed not to out themselves as perverts over the summer break. Inevitably this was accompanied by self-back-patting on how much more family-friendly parliament was under Labour. Well, it increasingly resembles a crèche, of that there is no doubt.

I pity Jesse Norman, one of the unambiguously impressive and intelligent MPs left in parliament. He has to suffer Powell’s clattering platitudes as he tries to ask her questions. Take his attempt to get an honest answer about

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