Next to the speaker’s chair, Gen Kitchen was handing out wheatsheaves. This is a sentence that probably needs unpacking. Gen is short for Genevieve, and she is the Labour MP for Wellingborough, after the by-election prompted by Peter Bone’s ejection, an event that was at once seven months ago and ancient history.

Having entered Parliament in February, Kitchen has more than twice as much experience as the median MP, and so she is now a junior whip. On Wednesday, it was her job to manage the frontbench ahead of prime minister’s questions, telling ministers where they could sit, ensuring that there would be space for Keir Starmer when he arrived, and handing them sheaves of wheat to pin to their lapel.

The prime minister didn’t even pretend to answer

That last bit was a mystery. Every so often, MPs feel the need to show support for a cause en masse. Obviously there are poppies in November and daffodils for St David’s Day, but some of these are more obscure than others. Why was Wes Streeting pinning grain products to his lapel? Fertility rite? Gluten awareness? No one up in the press gallery was sure.

As we pondered this, we realised that Rishi Sunak had materialised on the opposition front bench. When he was prime minister, his arrival would be greeted by a cheer, if only from the Labour benches. Now he slips in unnoticed. Perhaps Oliver Dowden smuggles him in in a bag.

The first question to Starmer was from Torsten Bell, an ambitious new MP with a Treasury background. “Back in the 1990s,” he began, as he launched into a brief lecture on the history of the minimum wage. Lindsay Hoyle had soon had enough.  After 76 words, by which time we had at least got to the present day, the Speaker rose. “Please sit down,” he told Bell, before delivering a quite brutal review of the novice’s performance. “It is easier if you face me,” he said. “It is meant to be a question, not a statement.” And with that, Bell was silenced. It was only the fifth time he has spoken in the chamber. How long will it take him to summon up the courage to rise a sixth time?

Bell hadn’t actually asked a question, but Starmer answered it anyway: the government was going to work with business and deliver for working people. Perhaps the leader of the opposition would get more. “Rishi Sun-ack!” Hoyle announced. The former prime minister is fading from memory so fast that the Speaker can’t even remember how to pronounce his name. Undeterred, Sunak asked about the Winter Fuel Allowance: was the government going to release the official assessment of the likely impact of means testing it?

The prime minister didn’t even pretend to answer. The Conservatives had left a £22 billion black hole in the finances, and should apologise. This is his answer to most things: he would mention it five more times in the next half hour, and is likely to tell us about it five million more times before the election.

We did at least learn about the wheat. “Today is Back British Farming Day,” Sunak said, and you could hear journalists saying “aaaaahhhhh!” Starmer pointed out that a lot of farmers now have Labour MPs, and Conservatives shook their heads, either in denial or in fury at having to live in such times.

Conservatives are annoyed that the new government are blaming everything on them, but the problem is that there’s enough truth in it that it works

We got a first question too from Nigel Farage. He was appalled, he said, to see people being released from prison to make room for “those who have said unpleasant things on Facebook.” Farage is technically the MP for Clacton, but in a wider sense he speaks for everyone in the country who just wants to engage in a little light racial hatred. After all, if we can’t demand that foreigners be burned alive, what was Magna Carta even for?

Starmer was ready for this one. He ignored Farage’s actual question, which was about “two-tier policing”, and instead waved a letter that police chiefs had sent Sunak before the election warning about prison overcrowding. Sunak shook his head, though it’s not clear what he disputes. Conservatives are annoyed that the new government are blaming everything on them, but the problem is that there’s enough truth in it that it works.

Later we watched Chris Grayling take his seat in the House of Lords. Grayling’s government career was one of catastrophe unmitigated by any notable success. And that is, somehow, putting it politely. Between 2012 and 2019 he was responsible for two big briefs: Justice and Transport. People who have any knowledge of the state of Britain’s prisons or trains will be surprised to learn that Grayling is considered the kind of person the country needs in its upper chamber.

But the most depressing thing about Grayling’s appointment is that he isn’t the most unqualified person the Conservatives have sent there in the last couple of years. He may not even be in the top five. As his right to claim an allowance and vote on laws for the rest of his life was read out, he seemed to be on the edge of tears. I know we were.