Boris Johnson should not be forgiven for his handling of lockdown. He needlessly criminalised everyday behaviour when voluntary guidelines would have sufficed. Nannies were prosecuted for delivering birthday cards to children; friends were apprehended for meeting up in the park. Meanwhile, the officials who had created these rules flouted them regularly.

Johnson wrongly denied that his staff were having parties. But compared with everything else that went wrong during that period, his false denial is trivial. It is surprising, then, that the House of Commons seems obsessed by it, rather than by the collapse of the democratic apparatus during lockdown, or the fact that the government was allowed to deploy emergency powers long after the crisis had passed.

There is little interest, too, in why mental health problems have increased, with 5,000 new claims for overall sickness benefit being made every day. We are told these details are due to be addressed in the official Covid inquiry, which may or may not appear before the end of the decade. Our politicians have absolved themselves of the need to answer hard questions.

Instead, they’d rather play games with the former prime minister, hoping to seek advantages for themselves while obsessing over incidental details. Johnson admits he misled parliament. He was punished for the mayhem he presided over by being thrown out of office in disgrace. To go over the former PM’s political corpse with such determination simply shows the power he still holds over his opponents. If MPs showed half as much interest in the fate of the 140,000 pupils now chronically absent from school, parliament could hold the government to account and speak up for the voiceless.

With politicians seemingly happy to ignore the effects of the lockdowns they voted for, how do they now spend their time? One preoccupation is the new law being passed to prohibit the import of animals killed by trophy hunters in Africa. Then there’s Christina Rees’s bill to ban the important export of detached shark fins. Neither of these bills would achieve what is intended.

In a sign of the general deterioration in the quality of parliamentary scrutiny, the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill is also thoroughly wrongheaded. As the Oxford conservationist Professor Amy Dickman – herself a vegetarian and no fan of hunting – has pointed out, African countries which have a trophy hunting industry also happen to be those which have been most successful at boosting the numbers of rare species. The two things are not unconnected. Trophy hunting is a £200 million a year industry which provides ample funds for conservation work, as well as providing a strong incentive to ensure healthy numbers of animals. It has been credited with restoring populations of lions and rhinos. In Kenya, by contrast, which banned trophy hunting three decades ago, populations of wild animals have been declining as land is turned over to agriculture.

Conservative MPs, in particular, seem to be seeking distraction away from issues which their government is unable to resolve. Set aside the failure of backbenchers to scrutinise lockdown measures which inflicted such needless damage on education, the economy and society. What about trying to repair some of that damage now? Where is the reform of planning laws that are still holding up the construction of new homes, much to the detriment of the younger generations priced out of home ownership? And what about the economic stagnation that has saddled Britain with one of the worst economic recoveries in Europe?

Rishi Sunak has had a decent start as Prime Minister. He has calmed markets. He has achieved a breakthrough in the Northern Ireland Protocol and in relations with the EU more generally. He has not shied away from the small boats problem. He has cemented Britain’s role in the Pacific through a deal in which Australia will buy UK-designed submarines as part of the Aukus pact. Sunak’s approval ratings are rising and some polls are narrowing – but not enough to save the Tories. With a May 2024 election now looking likely, time is running out to establish a narrative or sense of purpose in the government. The short-lived Truss administration at least had a theme: to jump-start economic growth.

What Sunak needs to do is to inspire a newfound seriousness in his MPs. The addiction to the Johnson-era psychodrama, loading up repeats of a defunct series, is not a good look. They are going to have to face up to the numerous problems which affect people’s day-to-day lives.

It may be late in the day for a government which has been in power for 13 years, and there is no guarantee that it can win a further election victory. But for a governing party to allow itself to fade into nothingness as its MPs seek comfort in non-issues is pitiful – the mark of a party which deserves not just an election defeat but to spend an entire generation out of office. On current evidence, that is where the Conservatives are headed.