PMQs sketch: Strange allies and a fake truce makes for weird times in Westminster

Weird times in Westminster. PMQs was downgraded today so that the evening news wouldn’t carry pictures of a remote House of Commons debating the referendum in a complacent and uncaring manner.

Passion is today’s watchword. Urgency too. And the personal touch. The party leaders are up north, right now, engaged in a three-legged race to lose the union. Possibly they’ll fail and save it instead. If so, it’ll be an accident.

Down here, MPs offered a show of unity. Unfortunately this created the very impression they were hoping to avoid: a crew of smug southern cronies chatting away on comfy leather upholstery, many hundreds of miles from the front line.

William Hague, leading for the Tories, insisted that a Yes vote would be ‘a tragic mistake.’ He several times stressed his Yorkshire background but overlooked the Caledonian derivation of his name.

Labour fielded its favourite Home Counties blue-stocking, Harriet Harman, whose aristocratic credentials have no rival in parliament – unless the Queen is there to conduct the state opening.