Jeremy Corbyn reveals his inner Blairite

Simple result at PMQs. Mrs May won without trying. Mr Corbyn lost in the same way. Even at his most animated, the Labour leader sounds like a second-hand appliance being tested by repairmen. Sometimes he’s a Hoover, sometimes a food-blender, sometimes a wood-sander grumbling away in a garden-shed. Today’s noise was the faint, ruminative drone of an electric toothbrush. He hunched over the despatch box, his jaw slack, his head down. His words dropped from his lips like scraps of dry parchment. It seemed he was addressing all his remarks to his socks. This did not work in his favour.

The game-plan today was to portray the prime minister as a sadistic landlady who enjoys evicting hungry orphans on Christmas Eve. He gave statistical proof: 128,000 children will eat their Christmas pud in ‘temporary accommodation,’ he said (meaning hotels). But to Corbyn it’s a ‘national disgrace’ to treat children like this because a hotel denies them ‘a home of their own’.