The House of Commons chamber was nearly empty. It’s possible there were more people in the public gallery, which contained several families. Why were they there? I’ve dragged my children round some pretty dull museums in the cause of broadening their horizons, but I’ve never asked them to sit through Maria Caulfield answering an urgent question on antibiotic shortages.

“Being relocated to Rwanda is not a punishment”

Not that there are any shortages, as Caulfield found herself wearily explaining, over and over again, to Labour MPs armed with stories about desperate parents running from pharmacy to pharmacy in search of medicine. “I don’t want to repeat myself,” Caulfield said more than once, before explaining that somewhere in the country there were sufficient stocks, but to no avail.

In the public gallery, a small boy slept, leaning on his older brother. Perhaps the Palace of Westminster is being run as a warm bank, somewhere freezing residents of London can come and sit in comfort without having to worry about their fuel bills. Or maybe they were hoping for some entertainment, some of the “Punch-and-Judy politics” that they’d heard so much about.

There was something of the pantomime about Suella Braverman’s statement on the Great Rwanda Deportation Plan. The Home Secretary had arrived in triumph, having for once won a court case. The Home Office lose so many of these that they must be in shock. Braverman, whose view of judges usually tends more to the “enemies of the people” end of the spectrum, praised “a legitimate decision by our independent judiciary”. But there were still villains to be found: the criminal gangs that smuggle refugees across the Channel, the lefty lawyers with their talk of human rights and safe havens, and of course the Labour Party.

“Being relocated to Rwanda is not a punishment,” the Home Secretary explained, implausibly. In reality the whole point of the policy is that it should be so unattractive that migrants decide they’d rather stay in Calais. But to listen to Braverman talk about this “safe and dynamic country with a thriving economy” – something that isn’t really true of Britain these days – you’d worry that people might climb onto a boat simply in the hope of winning a flight to Africa.

The small group of Tory MPs who had turned up made appropriately supportive noises through all this, murmuring disapproval at the wicked foreign judge who had stopped the last attempt to deport people to the paradise that is Rwanda, and gently hear-hearing their approval at the Braverman’s determination to resume the flights. They were, as people say at pantos, behind her.

Rees-Mogg would make an outstanding Widow Twankey

In reply, Yvette Cooper was carefully rude. If the kids in the gallery had hoped for custard pie fights, they were in for a disappointment. Labour is torn on the Rwanda policy. On the one hand, they suspect it’s an unpleasant idea that is designed to appeal to voters’ worst instincts. On the other, they fear it might be quite successful at that. The party doesn’t really have an answer on the  Channel crossings, except that the smugglers should be prosecuted more effectively.

So Cooper’s objections to the “unworkable, unethical, extremely expensive” Rwanda plan focused on the practical: well over £100 million pounds has been spent for far, and no one has yet been deported. Braverman said her opposite number was engaged in “performative politics” and “magical thinking”. Coming from her, this may have been intended as a compliment, matched only by her suggestion that the SNP’s Alison Thewliss was blinded by “ideological zeal”.

Of course the real stars of panto are the supporting cast, with their ridiculous costumes and bizarre catchphrases. Come on down, Bill Cash! A European judge, you say? “Such rulings do not command our respect.” Have you got a solution, Bill? Of course you have! “It becomes more essential than ever to apply the Notwithstanding Formula!” The Notwithstanding Formula is the new Conservative backbench catchphrase. At some point someone will have to find out what it means, but for the moment it’s enough to accept that it would solve all the government’s problems, if only Rishi Sunak were man enough to deploy it.

No pantomime performance would be complete without an appearance from someone who was once very famous and is now languishing in obscurity. And so Jacob Rees-Mogg unfolded himself from the bench upon which he had been reclining in his trademark manner. “Parliament has legislated!” he declaimed. “Our courts have ruled! We are apparently stopped” – he paused so that we could gather ourselves for the full horror of what he was about to say – “by a Russian judge WOKEN FROM A BAR to issue an injunction. CAN THIS STAND?”

In the public gallery, the families craned forward to see him. Finally, the children had got what they’d come for. Rees-Mogg would make an outstanding Widow Twankey. It will be a failure by all concerned if he’s not playing Blackpool Grand Theatre next Christmas.