The busy Speaker has made two new friends this week. He interrupted PMQs to introduce them to the house. ‘We’re very fortunate,’ he simpered, ‘to be joined in the public gallery by two members of the Osmond family. Jay and Merrill Osmond.’ The Osmonds were five luxuriantly coiffured brothers whose pop success in the 1970s owed itself, in part, to their square-jawed resemblance to the Kennedy clan. They were like Camelot but without the assassinations. So today the love-sick Speaker said how ‘very fortunate’ he was to have them in attendance. They probably felt the exact opposite. This was one of the flattest sessions in memory.
Absent were the chief combatants. The Tories’ stricken ice-queen is at a Nato pow-wow in Brussels. And Jeremy Corbyn had sent in Emily Thornberry to deputise for him. She has a killer-instinct at the despatch-box but today she was below par. Perhaps she under-delivered on purpose.
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