Starmer has a rival for Parliament’s most insincere MP

The first question posed to the Prime Minister was on mental health. Ironic, as watching him evade answer after answer is perhaps the surest way to send someone mad, short of giving them a daily glass of mercury.

Really, it should be renamed Prime Minister’s Evasions. Imagine a very boring game of Just a Minute, but instead of avoiding deviation and repetition, the PM tries to speak without answering the question directly or conveying any useful information whatsoever.

Kemi Badenoch led her questioning on Bridget Phillipson’s catastrophic schools Bill.

For a week, Downing Street had been engaged in the half-hearted act of pushing the Vandal of Sunderland South very gently under the bus. To call the Bill a dog’s breakfast would dishonour the early morning meals of canines.

Even in his evasive answers, the PM tacitly acknowledged this, pointing to the random safeguarding legislation which has been tacked on to try to make the Bill pass rather than the actual bits – like abolishing academies – which Badenoch was asking about. He cited breakfast clubs and anti-predator clauses, as if the tagging on of these riders to the Bill were its entire substance, rather than sweeteners designed to distract from the Vandal’s second-rate Stalinisation of education.

Still, the globules of microscopic political stature which populate Labour’s backbenches affected to lap this up. When Badenoch asked who benefited, they bellowed “children”, despite all evidence to the contrary. Some were in a particularly slavish mood; you can always tell who is most desirous of promotion by the amount of visible nodding-dog action.

Johanna Baxter simpered as if in the presence of a Greek god rather than a portly, pink lawyer from Islington. Alex Barros-Curtis feigned panto laughter throughout Badenoch’s questions. There are as yet undiscovered species of bottom feeder on the floor of the Pacific with more dignity than this.

Clearly sensing that he was appealing to his support base of people with neither face nor spine, the Prime Minister lapsed into his preferred mode of patronising guff.

He bragged that it was a Labour government that introduced academies. If he is such a fan, why is he abolishing them? Mrs Badenoch should spend less time online, he suggested. I think if I had to face this charade every week I wouldn’t be online, I’d be on heroin.

Given the quality of debate, small wonder that PMQs wasn’t the main order of the day. Later that afternoon, MPs debated the financial consequences of the assisted dying Bill. Sponsor Kim Leadbeater’s remarks showcased her unique mixture of self-congratulation and passive-aggression. She began by praising the quality of debate as “Parliament at its best”, and finished by accusing her opponents of “procedural manoeuvring”.

Kit Malthouse went full Logan’s Run. The terminally ill, he said, were already “reliant on expensive care services”; so preventing assisted suicide would be “costly in monetary terms”. If you heard this in an episode of Black Mirror you might think it far-fetched.

Paula Barker applauded Leadbeater’s “openness and transparency”, a mere 24 hours after she had voted for the committee to sit in private.

Leadbeater was even praised for “treating all views with dignity and respect”. Yesterday, she’d thrown back-to-back tantrums at Danny Kruger for gently questioning the quondam voluntary euthanasia society’s role in drafting the legislation, and for politely wondering at the committee’s desire for secrecy.

As evasive as Keir Starmer is, for now the title of this Parliament’s most insincere MP must rest with the Spen Valley’s very own angel of death.