Labour’s weak welfare attack leaves Tories to chant tribal slogans in Commons

Today’s Work and Pensions Questions was taken almost exclusively by Esther McVey – to the extent that when Steve Webb finally got the chance to answer a question, he joked that he had started to ‘feel unemployed’ while waiting for his big moment. Even Iain Duncan Smith only got one good stint at the despatch box, when Rachel Reeves asked him about the progress of Universal Credit. But the rest of the session was McVey Question Time.

Tory MPs are naturally in a tribal mood at the moment, and so all most of them want to talk about was the jobs fairs they’re all holding in their constituencies. ‘I organised a jobs fair’ has become the second most important phrase for a Tory MP to use after ‘long-term economic plan’, with bonus points for an MP who asks a question about their jobs fair that enables a ministerial answer involving the words ‘long-term economic plan’, as Philip Davies managed to do today.