PMQs sketch: Labour's yellow submarine

A new face at PMQs becomes samey after a few months. Corbo reached that point some time ago and Cameron can now contain him without breaking a sweat. He’s not threatened by the Labour leader for the simple reason that Corbyn lacks any forensic guile. To prepare, mount or press home an attack is beyond his powers so he just reads out his set questions in a low verbal moan, like next door’s Hoover.

Today they tussled over the scrapping of bursaries for trainee nurses. Cameron said this reform makes it easier to fill the wards with bustling sisters and swishing matrons. No, said Corbyn. It’s harder. Amazingly, some light was shed on this difference. It depends where they come from. Corbyn wants vacancies filled from any old place. But Cameron has unearthed a dastardly plan by low-cost economies, (Bulgaria was mentioned), to dump cheap carers on the NHS. He wants more home-made nurses created so that Britain will become self-sufficient in these angels of mercy and we won’t have to bus them in from the trans-Danube.