It's a bit rich for Starmer to say the Tories should be ashamed

You always know it’s going to be a good PMQs when things start with Ian Lavery. After a winding and angry monologue about things being grim up north – Holden Caulfield meets Ken Loach – Lavery, with supreme comic timing, asked the Prime Minister if there was much to look forward to on the horizon. Doubly funny was that Mr Lavery, a man so aggressive in his basic delivery that he makes an XL Bully look like a maiden aunt, managed to make this sound like a threat. Though, frankly, given the government’s track record it may as well be.

Starmer’s pomposity came back to bite him as Mrs Badenoch mocked him

Up stood Sir Keir for his weekly clucking. The fact that some Tories had found Mr Lavery amusing riled the PM: ‘He talks about poverty and they heckle him, they should be ashamed.’ It’s hard