Dull Starmer vs Sunak at PMQs make Dowden vs Rayner look like a night out with the Marx brothers

As the Prime Minister minced around Berlin announcing defense spending pledges, which he definitely intended to go in the Budget, honest, and Sir Keir Starmer sat at home eating gravel or whatever it is he does on his Wednesdays off, the House of Commons was treated to Panto favourites, Oliver “Olive” Dowden and Angela Rayner. The Charles Hawtrey and Joan Sims of British politics.

Before the two could begin, there was a personal election broadcast by Jonathan Gullis, MP for Stoke-on-Trent.

Tory MPs are doing this a lot recently, as the electoral cataclysm looms, trying to get their pet local initiative mentioned at PMQs in the hope of swaying a floating voter or two.

Today Mr Gullis majored on gardens, with a special mention for Tunstall town hall’s new library and family hub. Labor were furious as shouty sentence followed shouty sentence.

Twice the Speaker intervened – first to silence the Opposition, then to silence Gullis. “Order! Order! There is a question to be asked,” bellowed Sir Lindsay. (Was there?) Eventually the shouting Cicero of the Potteries sat down, having finally lost his one-man game of Just A Minute.

Talking of shouting, Angela Rayner began by naming the elephant in the apparently doubly claimed-for council house room.

She predicted that all Mr Dowden would talk about during the session was her living arrangements. In a rare moment in the House, Ms Rayner was right. (Even a stopped clock, and all that.)

Olive deployed her carefully-prepared lines – that they had faced one another so often she’d have to claim the House of Commons as a primary residence, that she would repeal all of Mrs Thatcher’s legislation except Right to Buy, referring to Rayner as “ the Right Honorable Landlady” – all delivered with his customary pouting cattiness.

Some comebacks were better than others. The shadow deputy leader excels at mangling her scripted lines, and fares better off the cuff.

“Never mind some secretive deep state,” she said, of the Conservative Party, “they’re in a deep state of sewage.”

Tall, powerful, but fundamentally wooden, she is the Treebeard of the Commons (if Treebeard were also occupying a secondary patch of woodland in Fangorn Forest).

Adding to the slight sense of pre-school about the whole affair, Rayner implied that Oliver Dowden was looking tired.

“Was it the phone calls at 3am from the “bad men?” she asked. Rishi Sunak, she added with her usual rapier wit, was “a pint sized loser”.

Neither big, nor clever (Rayner’s lines, not the PM). Still, a damn sight better than the feeble display you get from an average PMQs. Starmer and Sunak make Dowden vs Rayner look like a night out with the Marx brothers.

You almost wonder whether Olive and Ange will miss one another after the general election. Because chances are, neither of them will be doing this job after it.