Rishi Sunak was absent from the House of Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions. Was he withholding his labour in sympathy with teachers, who were also striking on Wednesday? Nothing so brave. He was attending a service over the road at Westminster Abbey, giving thanks for the National Health Service. This cast iron alibi was somewhat undermined by the belief, widespread in Parliament, that Sunak’s office had ensured the two events would clash. Had the Abbey really not been able to move things half an hour earlier? Did they have a bar mitzvah booked in at 10?

Perhaps she misses Dominic Raab

In his place we got Oliver Dowden. The deputy prime minister is a bullied supply teacher somewhere on the emotional journey from “idealist who wants the kids to know they can talk to him” to “tyrant who hands out random detentions for sneezing”. He seems to move without warning from gentleness to fury. Meanwhile the class knows there is fun to be had goading him.

A lot of the reasons for this are personal and unfair, but politics is an unfair business. Dowden’s face is pink, his hair golden. His voice is a little shrill and tends to rise when he’s under stress. At such moments he also struggles to pronounce his Rs, leading him to tell the chamber that the NHS was “a tweasured national institution” equipped with “wecord” numbers of nurses and doctors. MPs on all sides are as sympathetic about this as a class of Year 10s who proudly boast that their last maths teacher has now entered a monastery.

Oddly though Angela Rayner, asking the questions for Labour, struggled a little. Perhaps she misses Dominic Raab. Some people find it easier to be mean if they think the other person can take it. She opened by noting that Sunak will be skipping the session next week as well. “They really have given up,” she said.

Dowden, though, was ready for this. “It may come as a surprise to the right honourable lady,” he observed, “but some leaders trust their deputies to stand in for them.” Zing! His own side laughed. Perhaps he was going to survive after all. Rayner tried to look as if this was beneath her. There can be few things more dispiriting than the thought that you’ve been on the receiving end of a successful put-down from Oliver Dowden.

Britain under the Tories is not hard to distinguish from Utopia

“The only thing that is not soaring in price at the moment,” she replied, “is his gags, that are getting cheaper by the minute.” Turning to the question of renters being evicted from their homes, she asked whether Sunak would be able to stand up to the landlord interest in the Conservative party.

“I do not think the prime minister is going to take any lectures on weakness,” Dowden replied, getting cross now. This is quite true. If there’s going to be a parliamentary course in spinelessness, Sunak seems more likely to be teaching it.

Rayner asked about a woman named Jessica who had been evicted and forced to move with four children into her mother’s house. This infuriated Dowden. Like the prime minister, he seems to hate being reminded that Britain under the Tories is not hard to distinguish from Utopia. “I will tell you what we are doing for families like Jessica’s,” he said, spitting the poor woman’s name out. “We are increasing the national living wage. It was the Conservative party that introduced the national living wage, not the Labour party.” This is a reading of history that relies on no one remembering that George Osborne rebranded the Minimum Wage as the Living Wage to muddy the waters around low pay rates.

But if Rayner got Dowden riled, it was the SNP’s Mhairi Black who finished him off. She had just announced she was leaving Parliament at the next election. This is understandable. She was 20 years old when she arrived in 2015. The four years of Brexit votes that followed were not easy ones for anyone in Westminster, but must have been especially hard on someone who hadn’t expected to be there. Now, though, she knows how to play the chamber. Her voice is gravelly where Dowden’s is squeaky, and she projects the self-confidence of someone who has been doing the job all her adult life.

Dowden wished her well, noting that they had both arrived in the same election. “I am sure she will wish to join me in celebrating His Majesty King Charles receiving the Scottish regalia,” he went on, and Black gave him a look suggesting she would as soon celebrate St George’s Day with Jacob Rees-Mogg, shaking her head and making a chopping gesture that, given the history of previous kings named Charles, was slightly unfortunate.

“I thank him for his kind words,” she replied. “We did join this place at the same time. I’m pretty sure we will be leaving at the same time.”

It was an excellent comeback, all the better for having been off the cuff. The chamber erupted with laughter and genuine applause. Rayner doubled over with delight. Even the Cabinet’s shoulders were shaking. Dowden had lost the class. “It all started off so nicely,” he observed, sadly.