THIS week’s Prime Minister’s Questions was the warm-up to the Autumn Statement, like the Sex Pistols supporting Cliff Richard.

Indeed, Sir Cliff might seem a right unseemly raver compared to Jeremy Hunt. The Chancellor comes across like a gentle vicar with private doubts, the sort of man you’d be happy for your daughter to marry, knowing that he wouldn’t get up to anything sordid in the bedroom, like keeping the lights on or wearing pyjamas with a low flannel content. You have the feeling that, in his entire life, he’s never eaten an oven chip, even crinkle-cut.

It would be cruel to describe Keir Starmer’s suit as crinkle-cut, but it was one of those efforts where you can see the stitching around the lapel seams. Regular readers know I get hot under the collar about these, so I won’t labour – no pun intended – the point. But they just look unfinished. All I’m saying.

All the Labour leader was saying held little interest for the UK’s Jockobites. It was about the English NHS, where Sir Keir said 7.8 million people, “more than half the entire population of Wales”, were ailing on waiting lists.

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Talk about Wales, said Rishi Sunak, a Prime Minister, more than 70,000 people there, in the Labour-run(down) fiefdom, were waiting more than 18 months for treatment. This “compared to an England where, thanks to our efforts, we have virtually eliminated 18-month waits”.  Ooh, we Scots love a bit of English-Welsh argy-bargy. Gives us a wee break.

Said Keir of the PM: “He’s through the looking glass, this one.” While Rishi reflected on that, Wales came up again when Liz Saville Roberts, sometime pink-haired Westminster leader of Plaid Cymru, said low earners there paid the highest standing charges in the land, more than folk in that London.

Not to be outdone by her Celtic colleague, the SNP’s Patricia Gibson complained that “people in Scotland pay 50% more in standing charges than Londoners, despite exporting 3.2 million hours of electricity to England in the last two months alone”.

Tired voice: “It’s Scotland’s energy.” Aye.

PMQs contribution of the day, though, goes to Labour’s Daniel Zeichner, who ululated: “A few weeks ago, the world cringed at the Prime Minister’s fawning welcome for Elon Musk … So what exactly did the Prime Minister think he might learn from an unelected, super-rich individual, who’d taken over a once successful organisation and plunged it into a death spiral?”

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And so we spiral seamlessly into the Autumn Statement, for which gentle Jeremy, contrary to the whisky imbibing of chancellors long past, had ordered two half-pints of water (John Wayne voice to barman: “Make mine a double”).

He had, he began, good news: “It is my wife’s birthday and, unlike me, she is looking younger every year.”  Sweet. See? Nice man. Pyjamas with high flannel content.

Mr Hunt said Tories opposed big government, which is presumably why they elected a small Prime Minister. The Chancellor talked about “a compassionate Conservative Government”, then announced a freeze on alcohol duty so that people could dull the pain of living under one.

To Mr Starmer, he vouchsafed that they’d something in common. “Both he and I wanted to make a Jeremy prime minister. In fairness, his party and mine are probably equally relieved we failed. But where this Jeremy is growing the economy, his Jeremy” – Corbyn of that ilk – “would have crashed it.” Voters: “We’d have been better off with Clarkson of that ilk than either of them.”

Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves is someone you’d probably guess at work was “that woman on reception”. But, setting out her credentials, she claimed she’d been an economist at the Bank of England. Bit of a Walter Mitty character by the sounds of it. Says here in her CV that she was at Dunkirk an’ all, shortly before a stint as a circus acrobat.

Rachel said the sun was beginning to set on 13 years of Tory rule, which colourful allusion she augmented by painting a picture of the ravens leaving the Tower “when even Saatchi & Saatchi are saying the Tories aren’t working”.

Controversially, she claimed: “The British people won’t be taken for fools.” I see.  SNP economy spokesperson Drew Hendry claimed to be able to see right through Mr Hunt. Quoth he: “The Chancellor wants you to think he’s pulled a rabbit out of the hat today but all he’s done is pull the wool over people’s eyes.” Drew added portentously: “The nasty party is back in business.”

Nasty? Jeremy? In these pyjamas? Give over.