BEFORE Prime Minister’s Questions got under way, the Speaker announced that subtitles would now be available to any weirdos watching on Parliament TV. Explanations would be better.

A Ukrainian delegation in the gallery must have wondered about all the hollering and name-calling: “This is democracy? This is what we are fighting for?”

Well, sort of. It doesn’t have to be like this, of course. But the merry banter and scurrilous abuse helps boost TV ratings. In corrective institutions.

This week's episode might have been titled “The Protocol Palaver”. It was about the Northern Ireland one of that ilk which, according to my researchers, is something to do with Brexit.

Labour Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer asked Tory heid bummer Rishi Sunak if he thought the aforementioned Northern Ireland P had been poorly implemented.

Rishi (subtitled): “Naw.” To expand, the PM said his minions were “still in active discussions”, which are arguably better than passive discussions. Rishi confessed shamefully that he was “a Conservative, a Brexiteer and a unionist”. Any new agreement, he said, “needs to tick all three boxes”. Vomit in them, more like.

Westminster Sketch: As war rages in Ukraine, truce is declared in House of Commons

Mr Sunak spoke of the need to protect “Northern Ireland’s place in our precious Union”. He’s beginning to sound like Gollum from The Hobbit with this “precious” business. If you searched his suit pocketses, you’d probably find goblins’ teeth and a bat wing for lunch.

Sir K thought the PM was getting his teeth into a part of his own anatomy: “The Prime Minister is biting his tongue,” quoth he, “but at some point the irreconcilables [in his own party] are going to twig, and they’re going to come after him.”

Mr Sunak said the Starmeroid was taking up his usual position on Europe: “Give the EU a blank cheque and agree with anything they offer.” Ah, just like the good old days. “It’s not a strategy,” said Rishi. “It is surrender.” Yes, while the Tory position is “No surr …”

Moving swiftly on, the battle of bombast between our two sparring field mice saw the usual tropes flung out from their flailing fisties. Mr Starmer was playing political games, said Rishi. Rishi was weak, said Keir, keeping the country waiting “while he plucks up the courage to take on the malcontents, the reckless and the wreckers on his own benches”. Well, that’s pretty much them all, I think.

Sir Keir announced grandly: “We will put country before …” Ah, shaddup.

But he insisted on asking of the PM: “Why doesn’t he just get on with it?” Rishi (subtitled): “Oh, all right.”

The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn went on wholesale gas prices, which he noted had fallen by 75% since their peak. “Yet, in just a matter of weeks, the British Government, the Westminster Government” – that’s the one – “intends to increase energy bills by a further £500.” The sagacious skinhead wanted to know: “What would motivate a prime minister to do such a thing?”

Who knows? The profit motive? Desire to let the market rule?

Far from it, averred Mr Sunak. He was “supporting people with tens of billions of pounds with their energy bills”. Furthermore, unlike the Green-afflicted SNP, the Tories were “producing more home-grown gas here in the UK, in the North Sea”. North Sea: that’s the one. The bit just off Scotland.

Westminster Sketch: On Walkout Wednesday, Labour takes it sleazy in Westminster

In a peculiar gastronomic reference, the PM claimed to be quoting an SNP representative when he said that, if the party were a pizza company, its products would be “slow, wrong and costly”. Holy mozzarella! Topping stuff! I don’t get it.

Mr Flynn did not smile. His naked head shone instead with righteous indignation about the windfall the Prime Minister and his Chancellor would be picking up, “raiding the pockets of ordinary Scots while lining the pockets of Westminster”. Yes, pockets already full of goblins’ teeth.

Labour’s Matt Western noted the PM was “no stranger to paying fines”, one for Partygate and another for not wearing a seatbelt. But it really took the biscuit when his Government had to cough up £2.3 billion to Brussels for allowing “Chinese fraudsters” to flood Europe with cheap clothes and shoes.

How, Matt wanted to know, could he find that dough but not the money needed to give NHS workers and others “the pay increases they deserve”?

Conservative Mr Sunak encouraged socialist Mr Western “to be on the side of working people”, by supporting minimum service legislation aimed at stopping working people from going on strike.

Up in the gallery, one wondered what the Ukrainian delegation made of it all. Fraudsters? Fines? Shoes? Chinese? Lip-reading subtitles: “It’s democracy, Volodymyr. But not as we know it.”