Penny Mordaunt takes a dig at the Old Etonians

It’s Christmas party season in Westminster and tonight it was the turn of the Adam Smith Institute to do the honours. The free market think tank turned to Penny Mordaunt for her now-traditional turn on the seasonal circuit. Steerpike’s sources tell him that the Leader of the House writes most of the gags that she deploys at Business Questions. And tonight was no exception as she expounded the merits of the festive goods available in parliament:

We are well into the first advent week but it is not too late, folks, to get an advent calendar if you’ve not got one already. And I’m just going to give you a quick plug if you don’t mind of the House of Commons gift shop and what we have on special offer in there, because we do have some lovely discounted advent calendars. We have an HS2 — I don’t recommend it, it’s very overpriced and it only has enough chocolate to get you through to the second week of advent.