You know you’re in a tricky spot as a Tory minister if Sir Desmond Swayne is to the left of you. The policing minister, Chris Philp, was in the Commons explaining how the Metropolitan Police, having held a long series of discussions with republican protestors ahead of the coronation about exactly what they could do and where, then came to arrest six of them, including their leader.

Philp had put on Union Jack socks for his appearance, but they didn’t seem to help his confidence

Saturday had, Philp began, been “a moment of national pride”. At this Michael Fabricant made a noise that I wrote down as “YEE-UH, YEE-UH, YEE-UH!” Even he seems to have been aware that he was overdoing things a touch, as he followed this with a cheeky smirk.

Fabricant was one of the very small number of Conservative MPs to turn up for the session. If you want to get a Tory excited about free speech, tell them that a student society has done something silly. Tell them that a political movement’s leader was locked up by the actual police for the best part of a day, and they suddenly find they have other places to be.

Philp’s position, too, was that the detention of our fellow citizens on grounds so spurious that the police apologise afterwards was nothing to be concerned about. After all, he said repeatedly, a lot of people hadn’t been arrested: “Hundreds of people did exercise their peaceful right to protest!” Perhaps it sounded better in his head.

Philp had put on Union Jack socks for his appearance, but they didn’t seem to help his confidence. He cautioned David Davis, a Conservative critic of the law under which the arrests had happened, that he shouldn’t say “these people were wrongfully arrested”. Although not even the Met now say they were rightfully arrested. At this point Swayne put his head in his hand.

Of the few Tories who were there, most wanted to speak in support of the police. As Voltaire so nearly put it: “I disapprove of what you say, so get in the van, sunshine.” Serial Boris Johnson-defender Michael Ellis, in recent months so enthusiastic in his argument that a prime minister is innocent even after he’s been fined, said that the police were “entirely within their rights to arrest individuals to prevent a crime”. And, indeed, to prevent a not-crime.

It had been very difficult, Philp replied, for the police to know whether the people unloading signs in the place where the police had told them to unload signs were in fact part of a sinister plot to attach themselves to things. These were “fast-moving circumstances where judgments were inevitably difficult”.

Probably we should be grateful the cops didn’t shoot anyone

As Keanu Reeves told us all so vividly in the movie Speed: “Pop quiz! There’s a protestor with a ball of string in Trafalgar Square. Is it an innocent bundle of twine, or are they going to tie themselves to Nelson’s Column? You have seconds to act. WHAT DO YOU DO?” Probably we should be grateful the cops didn’t shoot anyone.

“Many things are clear with hindsight,” Philp said. Indeed quite a lot of them are clear with foresight, which is why the demonstrators had agreed their plan with the cops.

Fabricant rose to his feet. “I’m getting pretty fed up actually,” he said, “with the police apologising all the time.” So, in a way, are the rest of us. Fabricant seems to feel the fault lies with the people the police are apologising to, however. After all, if they didn’t keep getting themselves arrested — or raped, or murdered, for that matter — by the police, the Met wouldn’t have to keep apologising.

There were a lot of good questions from the opposition benches, most of which went unanswered. If someone were carrying a bike lock, would that put them in breach of the law? How could future protestors who coordinated their plans with the police be confident that they too wouldn’t be arrested? Why, despite assurances from the government that this wouldn’t happen, had a journalist been detained?

It was, uncharacteristically, Swayne who made one of the best and most damaging points. “There’s been a misunderstanding clearly, despite the police doing a brilliant job,” he began. “That’s why there’s been an apology. But wouldn’t the minister expect that misunderstanding to have been resolved well within the 16 hours for which the six were incarcerated, and surely there should be some questions asked about that?”

Philp had no answer. There was a complaints procedure, he said, so anyone unhappy about being arrested could pursue that. It’s all very well being an MP and being able to summon a minister to answer your questions, but when they reply like this you’d achieve as much by writing a letter to The Times.