WHAT a life Boris Johnson leads. At Prime Minister’s Questions, he outlined his forthcoming engagements: Commonwealth Heads summit in Rwanda, G7 summit in the Bavarian Alps, Nato summit in yonder Madrid. Must be summit up.

On top of all that, there was summit wrong with his sinuses earlier this week and he’d had to go under the knife, as Basily Fawlty might have put it.

Perhaps it was a sinus of the times that the first question he faced at PMQs was about his personal life, or at least that tricky interface where it kisses public life with tongues.

Labour’s Chris Elmore pointedly asked the PM if he’d ever considered appointing his “current spouse” – ouchy – to a Government or royal household post. This referred to reports that Boris had tried getting Carrie a job with the Foreign Office or a royal charity. As educated readers will know, it’s a sinus qua non that, in government, one does not do that sort of thing.

(My thundering apologies, readers. It was a boring PMQs so I’m having to do the gags rather than just quoting the usual comedians at the dispatch box.)

Mr Elmore thundered righteously: “Be honest, Prime Minister, yes or no?” Briefly, I thought that Boris, like Big Keith at his jobs appraisal in The Office, might reply: “What are the options again?”

Instead, he blustered: “I know why the party opposite wants to talk about non-existent jobs in the media because they don’t want to talk about what’s going on in the real world.”

The real world: that place where they have by-elections. Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer alighted on the one in Wakefield, where the “plucky Conservative candidate” was so “useless” his own party members didn’t support him, and the last person they’d sent there “had been convicted of a sexual offence”. What were the chances, eh?

Boris riposted brusquely that the voters would rather back a “solid” Conservative Government than a Labour Party whose leader “hasn’t even got the gumption to speak out against the rail strikes”.

Yes, thought these might come up. Sir Keir averred that neither Boris nor his Transport Secretary had “lifted a finger” to stop the strikes. But surely the Government had been giving the unions the finger all week?

Gleefully, Boris pointed out that 25 Labour MPs had been on the picket line, “backing the strikers, while we back the strivers.” Strivers: those who won’t accept a democratic union vote.

The PM then reminded the Hoose that the union barons had put millions into making Labour their mouthpiece, while the Tories were the true friends of the people, loading up the lieges with largesse.

Alas, this pose as party of the lower classes came unstuck with revelations about their wanting to remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses. Sir Keir leapt on this like a lion on a big sweaty wildebeest waddling forth to WeightWatchers.

“Pay rises for city bankers, pay cuts for district nurses!” he roared (work with me on this).

Boris cunningly ignoring the bankers, harping on again about Labour MPs being “out on the picket line literally holding hands with Arthur Scargill”.

Arthur of that ilk, older leaders will recall, was the militant miners’ leader who nearly toppled Margaret Thatcher’s Government. “It’s worse than under Jeremy Corbyn,” sniffed Boris, adding that we were being taken “back to the 1970s”. These were the days: when bankers were respectable people who didn’t hold the country to ransom.

We should record that there was some top hullabaloo at times during proceedings, with the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, saying to one stentorian SNP dude: “Mr MacNeil [Angus of that ilk], your voice isn’t quiet. It’s like mine. It carries. So, if you want it to carry, try standing on the terrace for a while.”

Speaking of manly Hebrideans – come on, folks, bit of imagination – the SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, must have heeded Boris’s injunction last week about there being more important subjects to talk about at PMQs than Scottish independence.

That must be why we heard about rail services in Harrogate, policing in Warrington, levelling up in Rother Valley, battery vehicle production in Coventry, 6th form exams in Hereford, French police at the football, bullying in Watford, and the menopause.

Mr B focused on the UK economy, with Brexit “driving wages down”. Wondered what it was.

Meanwhile, outside these Gothic halls, union militancy spreads like wildfire among the loosely defined proletariat. As Labour’s Kate Osborne pointed out: “Even barristers are on the verge of taking industrial action.”

All together now: “Arise ye workers from your ISAs …”