POLITICS is confusing today. Both before and during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, we heard Tories speak in defence of ethnic minorities, LGBTQ rights, vulnerable women. Have they no sense of tradition?

Meanwhile, Labour support Brexit and oppose migration, while the Scottish nationalists stand revealed as fanatical unionists – for Europe.

How braw, therefore, to start PMQs with a good old-fashioned issue upon which everyone knew where everyone stood: private schools. Yay! (Tories)! Boo! (everyone else).

Speaking for Everyman, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had a go at the PM’s nourishing mother, Winchester College, which like all such well-heeled joints improbably enough has charitable status.

Winchester, Sir Keir pointed out, has a rowing club, a rifle range and an extensive art collection. Gosh, how do they ever get any work done? It charged over £45,000 in fees. No wonder, you seen the price of rifles these days?

Sir K said that, just down the road from Winchester, state school pupils in Southampton were making a bags of their exams. He wanted to know if Winchester’s £6m in tax breaks might not have been better spent in Southampton.

Rishi Sunak, a Prime Minister, should have said after The Jam: “Hello-hooray, what a nice day, for the Winchester rifles!”

But, still, he defended his alma mater by yodelling: “Whenever he attacks me about where I went to school he is attacking the hard working aspiration of millions of people in this country.”

That’s right. Picture the scene in a council house kitchen where the family discusses sending little Aurelius to Winchester. “It’s £45,000, just twice your salary, Dad.”

“Yes, well, I’ll look in my wallet. Perhaps our Mother could sell her kidneys?”

Mr S proclaimed: “This is a country that believes in opportunity over resentment.”

Is it really? In that case I’ve a bridge over the Firth of Forth I can sell it.

Sir Keir quoted Rishi’s own Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove: “You could scarcely find a better way of ending burning injustices than scrapping these handouts”. As for the idea that handouts to private schools provided nourishing crumbs off the table for state school peasants, that was, said Sir K, “laughable”.

Rishi: “This is about supporting aspiration.”

Keir: “He talks about aspiration. They are killing off aspiration in this country.”

Alas, after such straightforward class warfare, this was the Labour leader’s cue to exalt a Tory shibboleth: home ownership. Why, he wanted to know, was this harder now than when the Tories came to power 12 years ago?

A child born in Britain today would be 45 before they could buy their first home, he claimed. What’s wrong with that? Never did me any harm. And I love my converted bus shelter.

“I love my kids,” said Mr Starmer, “but I don’t want to be cooking them dinner in 30 years’ time.” No, I daresay they don’t either (“Steak Bakes again. Dad, stop trying to pretend you’re working class”).

“Country before party,” proclaimed Keir, “that’s the Labour way.” Labour activists: “No, it isn’t.” Rishi: “More debt, more strikes, more migration”, that’s the Labour way.

“It is,” added Mr Sunak, “the politics of yesterday with him or the future of the country with me.” Voters: “Him! Him!”

It was St Andrew’s Day yesterday, and Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, enlisted the controversial apostle to the Remain cause. Interesting.

For, while the Christian activist was celebrated in many countries, the PM was ripping up 4,000 pieces of EU legislation. I confess I couldn’t quite follow this. Was he saying St Andrew had been crucified by Nigel Farage?

Mr B went on to castigate Sir Keir for “desperately trying to out-Brexit the Prime Minister”, and proceeded to give it large in claiming: “Brexit is now the elephant in the room.” Reader’s voice: “Not the only one, mate.” Who said that? Disgraceful.

The PM responded to this tubby-thumping by proclaiming that Brexit “allowed us to control our borders”. Well, that brought the House down. How they laughed. Particularly in Albania.

Ian wasn’t laughing (last time he burst his waistcoat buttons). He raged: “So, on this St Andrew’s Day, can the Prime Minister finally tell the people in Scotland the democratic path to escape Westminster control, to deliver independence, so we can get back to the European Union.”

Oh, Mama Brussels, how we miss your whopping great dripping teats. How bewildered we have become. Scottish nationalists say no to British independence from Brussels! British nationalists say no to Scottish independence from London! Socialists say yay for private property! Tories say hooray for minorities! It really is all so confusing.