Moments after touching tributes to Alex Salmond the Commons heard an urgent question about sleaze in Downing Street.
In a trice we leapt from affection to rancour. That’s politics: blubbing one moment, furious with each other the next. Worse than a country wake. Yet they all appeared to be sober.
The question was provoked by the hot scoop that Scotland Yard was ordered to provide a presidential motorcade for Taylor Swift (pop singer, m’lud). Free tickets to concerts by the same artiste were palmed to various ministers, including our leading moraliser Sir Keir Starmer.
My dears, it was quite like the old days. A hapless minister hob-gobbled at the despatch box while opposition MPs thundered about corruption at No 10. ‘Hypocrisy!’ cried the opposition. ‘Brass neck!’ replied the lot in power. ‘We’ll take no lectures from the party opposite!’
That last one has come to acquire the comforting force of an Homeric epithet. When you hear, ‘we’ll take no lectures from the party opposite!’ you…