ONCE more, the House of Commons witnessed the Conservatives positioning themselves as the party of the lower classes, admirers of Scotland, and passionate in pro-refugee sentiment.

In her response to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the economy was presided over by Alice in Sunakland, where nothing is “quite as it seems”. But the disorientation permeates all British political life now.

Picture Rishi Sunak in a blue dress as he emerged from the rabbit hotel to announce that a strong economy was necessary to help Ukraine and impose sanctions, which weaken the economy. The Conservatives, vouchsafed the Chancellor, took a “responsible approach to cutting tax”, usually by raising it.

After Rishi’s announcing of various measures about petrol, solar panels and National Insurance, somebody shouted: “Is that it?”

It most certainly was. More specifically, it was “jam tomorrow”, said Ms Reeves, who invoked Humpty Dumpty, the White Rabbit, and financial expert Martin Lewis in her denunciation of Mr Sunak’s mini-Budget. Of these three luminaries, Dumpty seemed to have a particularly strong command of the Chancellor’s mystical fiscals.

Interesting, or indeed otherwise, the People’s Rishi prefaced his pennies and pounds palaver with the following observation: “What the authoritarian mind perceives as division, we know are the passionate disagreements at the heart of our living, breathing democracy.” I see.

Well, earlier, we were privileged to see these passionate disagreements in the weekly session of heavy breathing that is Prime Minister’s Questions.

Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer chose the P&O sackings as his subject, giving Boris Johnson, a Prime Minister, the opportunity to condemn the shipping employer’s “callous behaviour” and threaten it with fines of millions of pounds, while promising the living wage to all mariners in British waters.

Sir Keir democratically dumped on this pseudo-proletarian piety, claiming the Government had advanced warning of the sackings, that it was still legal to pay seafarers less than the living wage, and that in general the People’s Boris was “all mouth and no trousers”.

It was an unpleasant image, made worse by a further reference to Brother Johnson’s “half-ars*d bluster and waffle”. I have listened back to this buttockular allegation several times, to make sure if he said “ars*d” or “assed”, and I’m sad to say it appears to be the former, prompting me to ask the Herald janitor to bring me some asterisks.

Did you ever hear the like? You wouldn’t get away with saying “ars*” in Putin’s Duma. You’d be slung out on your fundament.

I swear to you that, every week, I don’t mean to use words such as the foregoing to make a weak link to the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford. It just seems to happen. It’s as if a wicked, ethereal hand were guiding mine.

At any rate, Mr Bottom – sorry, Blackford – found himself in the unusual position of being cheered by the whole house, Tories included. Initially, I’d feared the worst in this enemy parliament, after a week of peculiarly ill-informed anti-Scottish articles in the English press alleging anti-English sentiment (in the world’s most woke wee country where everyone is too scared to even mention the E-word).

However, his moving account of the evacuation of Ukrainian orphans to Scotland, and his generous praise of a helpful Immigration Minister and Refugee Minister (in the Lords), filled Ian’s ears with hear-hears.

The Prime Minister said he was grateful to the SNP man for his work, adding with a titter: “It’s another example, if I may say it without embarrassing him further, of the burgeoning co-operation between us.”

As last week, the last word goes to Labour’s whimsical Matt Western who suggested that he had missed the PM the previous Wednesday. In a mature democracy, Mr Putin please note, this is known as a permissible porkie.

Matt went on to talk of “a fantasy castle, perhaps Snow White too, certainly girls, girls, girls”, allegedly promised at a party that was “less burlesque, more Berlusconi” (groans all round).

It has been alleged, allegedly, that the PM had been entertained at these “bunga bunga parties”, hosted by a Russian oligarch, which might explain why MI6 didn’t “entirely trust” Mr J, said Matt.

Baffled, ostensibly, Boris dissed Mr Western’s “elaborately confected questions”, adding: “I’m afraid I simply failed to detect any crouton of substance in the minestrone of nonsense that he’s just spoken.”

On which culinary note, we finish slurping the soup of democracy and, breathing stentoriously – if not actually snoring – remind ourselves that we are privileged to live in a democracy where, as ever, divided we stand united.

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