YOU would think Boris Johnson might have done his homework ahead of this, the first PMQs of the new term. After all, Keir Starmer was bound to ask him about the food “hampers” that are supposed to add up to a week’s worth of lunches.

Shameful images of cling-filmed cheese slices and meagre halved vegetables show the grim reality facing children and parents in England who would usually be entitled to free meals at school, but are currently at home due to lockdown.

Starmer wants to know if Johnson would be happy for his own children to live on these rations, and it sounds like he wouldn’t given he calls them “disgraceful images”. But he can’t resist the opportunity to tell the politician opposite that footballer Marcus Rashford is doing a better job than he is when it comes to holding the Government to account.

Undeterred, Starmer shoots and scores by pointing out that the photographed parcels fall only slightly short of the examples set out in Department of Education guidance – the difference being little more than “a tin of sweetcorn, a packet of ham, and a bottle of milk”. So given this is a scandal of the Government's own making, will the guidance be taken down by the end of the day?

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Presumably not, since Johnson swerves the question and calls Starmer a hypocrite on the basis that it was a Conservative government, not a Labour one, that introduced free school meals. I believe technically the policy was Nick Clegg’s idea, but let’s not allow details to get in the way of irrelevant point-scoring attempts.

The Speaker isn’t happy with the PM’s tone, asserting with touching credulity: “I don’t believe anybody’s a hypocrite in this chamber." With all the over-optimistic zeal of someone writing out their new year's resolutions on page one of a fancy new diary, he adds: “We’re tidying up how this parliament behaves!”

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Excellent, so surely now the PM will start answering the questions and treating others with respect. There will be no more silly name-calling, false claims or ludicrous attempts to distract from the topic of the questions.

That hope is dashed within one minute and 54 seconds, at which point the Speaker has to jump in again to tell him that there are questions and that sometimes (only sometimes?!) he has to try to answer them. Minutes later it’s left to a fizzing Ian Blackford to condemn Johnson’s persistent attempts to  “traduce the name of the Scottish National Party”.

He is doing his best to highlight the plight of Scottish seafood exporters who are losing at least £1 million in sales per day due to Brexit red tape.

The response? A rant about the SNP’s ambitions for Scotland and an utterly bizarre challenge to the SNP’s Westminster leader to “say that he likes the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine".

The Speaker has apparently used up all his interventions for the day, as he responds with nothing more than a chuckle while introducing the next question. Because who cares if Johnson is disrespectful to the SNP, ignores Blackford’s question and completely changes the subject?

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The Speaker may not believe there are any hypocrites in the Commons but it’s clear that double standards apply. Johnson will be delighted that Blackford fought back – anything to distract from the serious issue he's trying to raise.

Perhaps someone should send the PM his own hamper. Let's see what he can rustle up from a loaf, cheese slices, half a cucumber and a bag of spoiled prawns.