Sir Keir Starmer’s advisers have very short memories. At PMQs, the Labour leader mocked Liz Truss for visiting America to ‘flog a new book in search of fame and wealth’. He jeered at her suggestion that ‘the deep state’ had sabotaged her career, and he put it to Rishi Sunak that the Tories have become ‘the political wing of the Flat Earth Society.’

Sir Keir forgets that his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, is far more embarrassing than Liz Truss whose premiership was over in less time than it takes to eat a toffee apple. Corbyn was Labour leader for four years and Sir Keir was one of his favoured lieutenants. Rishi couldn’t believe his luck. Here was an opportunity to remind the world of Corbyn’s worst offence.

‘He called Hamas our friends,’ said Rishi. And he spat out a personal insult at Sir Keir. ‘Spineless hopeless and utterly shameless.’ His rage was palpable.

Sir Keir wasn’t expecting this level of passion and he needed to adjust his questions to the more sombre mood of the debate. Instead he maintained his joshing, bantering style about Truss.

‘She continued on her American odyssey,’ he laughed, ‘her journey into the Wild West of her mind.’ Then he brought up Tommy Robinson, ‘a right-wing thug’, and he asked if Nigel Farage would be welcomed back into the Tory fold.

Rishi shifted tack and spoke about the historic readiness of the Conservative party to promote talent from every strand of society. ‘The first Jewish prime minister’, he boasted. ‘The first female prime minister. The first Muslim home secretary. The first British Asian prime minister.’ He seemed to suggest that the Tories invented woke activism.

Sir Keir called on Rishi to bar Liz Truss from the official list of Tory candidates. This, of course, is exactly the punishment meted out by Sir Keir to Corbyn who is unlikely ever to stand in the Labour interest again. Amidst his accusations, Sir Keir seemed to recall a gentler, nobler form of Conservatism.

‘This isn’t the Tory party your parents voted for’, he said. The words sounded unscripted. Had he given us a glimpse into his family’s affiliations? His father was a humble toolmaker, as everyone knows, and he never once asked for promotion at the factory where he worked because he owned the place. But did he vote Tory in the 1980s? Let’s think. A captain of industry living in the Kent/Surrey borders might well have supported Mrs Thatcher at the 1987 election when the Labour party was committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Perhaps Sir Keir could clarify his parent’s voting record, now that he’s raised it in parliament. Whether his statement will last the day without being changed is another matter.

The SNP loves to grandstand like a superpower

The humourless Liz Saville Roberts of Plaid Cymru got a lot of laughs by mistake. She begged Rishi to sign a declaration, ‘the full facts pledge’, which commits politicians to honest campaigning. She accused the Conservatives in Wales of lying in recent weeks and she implied that candidates from no other party ever tell porkies while out on the stump. Hence the Tory laughter. But no wonder Ms Saville Roberts worries about misrepresentation. Her salon seems to have dyed her hair pink in the hope that she wouldn’t notice. Perhaps she didn’t.

Stephen Flynn of the SNP had a go at Rishi over Gaza as he did last week. But he radically softened his stance and asked if the PM supported Joe Biden’s hopes for a ceasefire. The question couldn’t have been milder. Flynn may have the face of a gangster but he has the heart of a marshmallow. It was left to one of his backbench colleagues, Alyn Smith, to ram the point home. Smith issued a stern warning to Rishi that if he didn’t support a ceasefire in the UN security council, our parliament would look ‘like a sick pantomime.’ The SNP loves to grandstand like a superpower on the world stage but at home they campaign to turn Scotland into a defenceless minnow. Something doesn’t add up.