Every now and again David Cameron gets bored with being Prime Minister and lets the job out to his close personal friend Harry Flashman.
The trouble is Dave doesn’t know when he is going to do it and so it was today.
One minute there he was happily trundling through Prime Ministers Questions.
The next, a puce version of the Incredible Hulk appeared, without the muscles, but with the bulging neck veins.
Gone was dapper Dave of Downing Street and in his place something to frighten the kids.
The PM’s inner-Flashman has been much missed in recent months following the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn and new politics.
Jeremy’s decision to treat Prime Ministers Questions as a place where you asked questions of the Prime Minister was the problem.
It should, if you remember, be the place where insults are swopped but the Labour leader would have none of it – until today.
Maybe he’d had a bad night on the ginseng but he seemed to have borrowed a slightly grumpy suit from someone.
Instead of mild-mannered Jeremy dead-eying Tory backbenchers, not-quite-so pleasant Jeremy stumbled across the Flashman button.
He had Dave on the back foot anyway over Google and its tax returns.
How did he justify Chancellor George describing as a “major success” a tax rate equivalent to just three per cent.
Dave didn’t and Chancellor George, wearing his traditional off-white complexion, wished he hadn’t.
Jeremy said his mate Jeff had been in touch and wanted to ask the PM where he could get a job paying just 3% income tax.
Whether it was Jeff or Jeremy Dave decided now was the time to pop out for a cup of tea and let Flash in.
Jeremy was in the same party as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown said the newly-energised bully boy.
Tories howled as the Labour leader – and his MPs – looked shocked at the suggestion.
He had met the unions and give them flying pickets, said Flash; he had met Argentinians and given them the Falklands.
And he had “met with a bunch of migrants” in Calais and said they should be allowed into England.
“A bunch of migrants”, the phrase brought a sudden lull to the proceedings.
Had the PM, in whatever guise he was appearing actually used the word “bunch” to describe those living in the Calais camps.
Had the man who got into serious trouble last year describing migrants as “a swarm” unthinkingly departed from the agreed script.
Jeremy missed it. Nobody else did.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.
“Bully Boy” flickr photo by Patrick Haney https://flickr.com/photos/splat/6773050001 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license
