Rishi Sunak entered Parliament to medium-sized cheers. Many Conservative MPs were pleased that he’d been found alive. The search for his spine goes on, but hopes are fading: he is still refusing to say whether he thinks prime ministers should lie to parliament.

Actually, there is some dispute about this: Sunak’s press secretary later insisted the prime minister  had “expressed his view”, but refused to say what it was. Maybe it’s in one of the WhatsApps that the Covid Inquiry is trying to get hold of. Or perhaps the prime minister is keeping a journal of all the thoughts he dare not share with the world. The Secret Diary of Rishi Sunak, Aged 43 And A Bit.

DAD! You don’t understand ANYTHING!

There is certainly something adolescent in the prime minister’s reaction whenever opposition MPs ask about all the things that aren’t working. His head goes back impatiently, like a teenager asked why he still hasn’t picked his clothes up off his bedroom floor. He has SAID that he will DEAL with inflation, and he is GOING to do it, but FIRST he has got to revise for his CHEMISTRY test. AND HE CAN’T DO EVERYTHING AT ONCE.

In the face of stroppiness, Keir Starmer took on the role of Sarcastic Dad. Did the prime minister agree with one of his MPs that Britain faced a “mortgage catastrophe?” Sunak swerved, but the Labour leader was ready for that. “The prime minister has spent all week saying that he does not want to influence anyone or anything,” he said. “He was certainly keeping to that in his answer.” Wasn’t it the case that mortgages were going up because of the government?

Sunak rolled his eyes again. DAD! You don’t understand ANYTHING! “As ever,” he sighed, Starmer “is not aware of the global macroeconomic situation.” Labour MPs greeted this with a delighted “Ahaaaah!” They were very happy. They may have lost Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, but Sunak is proving to have his own brand of political haplessness.

The prime minister asked Starmer to explain why “interest rates are at similar levels in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and in New Zealand”.  Earlier in the year, Tory MPs had treated this line as a killer blow. Now they just sat in silence. They know it’s not going to work on doorsteps.

Perhaps one day, when his diary is unlocked, our grandchildren will learn what Sunak thought about it

Starmer, in any case, had a comeback ready. “I appreciate,” he began, “that the prime minister has a keen interest in the mortgage market in California, but I am talking about mortgage holders here.” Sunak rolled his head back again. His diary is going to be written entirely in furious capitals tonight. For a start, the very suggestion that there’s a mortgage on his Santa Monica pad is offensive. It seems rather more likely it’s held through a series of impenetrable shell companies.

“I am sure that, from the vantage point of his helicopter, everything might look fine, but that is not the lived experience of those on the ground,” Starmer wound up.

Sunak was seething. He accused Starmer of “personal attacks and petty point-scoring”, but that’s the name of the game at Prime Minister’s Questions, and complaining about it is simply an admission that you’ve lost.

There was a small attempt to cheer him up. Liam Fox rose to tell us how well things were going. “Is it not time that we heard more good news and talked Britain up?” he asked, to cheers, some of them possibly ironic. It seems safe to assume that his mortgage is long paid off.

Labour MPs had rather more to work with. Meg Hillier asked why lockdown partygoer Shaun Bailey was off to the Lords. Sunak replied that it was nothing to do with him. He was just the prime minister.

Perhaps the most significant moment came after a question from the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, very much the snotty younger brother in this unhappy family. He referred Sunak to earlier comments that inflation was coming down and asked if he had “taken his honesty lessons from Boris Johnson”. As an attack, this didn’t quite work: Sunak’s big problem is competence, not honesty. But it yielded an important ruling from the Speaker.

“I want members to be a little more cautious in what they say,” Lindsay Hoyle told the chamber. Flynn had, apparently, used unparliamentary language. We know, of course, that an MP should never accuse another of lying or being drunk. Nor can they use words such as “blackguard”, “coward”, “guttersnipe”, “swine”, and “traitor”. We now have a new convention: you can’t suggest that a member is like Boris Johnson. What a legacy. Perhaps one day, when his diary is unlocked, our grandchildren will learn what Sunak thought about it.