Labour struggles to be an Opposition as MPs mock its Trident tribulations

Emily Thornberry might not know why Jeremy Corbyn made her Shadow Defence Secretary, but she will have known that this afternoon’s departmental questions for the Ministry of Defence was going to be a difficult session. She came armed with two questions that she knew few would listen to, and delivered them well. But for the rest of the session, she had to listen to MPs on all sides of the Commons attacking not the government of the day, but the policy of the Opposition party. In fact, the government was barely scrutinised at all today, so intense was the focus on Labour and its potential U-turn on Trident.

Michael Fallon had also come armed, not with facts and figures designed to answer backbench questions about whether his department was much cop, but with a series of denunciations of Labour’s policy. He delivered all of these in a deadly serious, deep voice, as though he were breaking terrible news to someone.