“I’d prefer not to be in this situation,” Alister Jack told the chamber. No one doubted it. There are men and woman who dream of finding themselves at the precise centre of the political debate, who thrive on the fury of opponents and the roar of supporters. The Scottish Secretary is not one of them.

Jack is the wet blanket of news

Even those MPs who relish a fight might feel a twinge of nerves on hearing that the House of Commons was going to be discussing the issue of transgender rights, a subject on which most debate generates more heat than light. Worse, these rights were going to be discussed in the context of Scottish constitutional politics. Jack, a man who one senses would be far more comfortable discussing the relative merits of Highland and Speyside malts, could have been forgiven for crawling back under the duvet and calling in sick.

But Tuesday was to be Jack’s day in the spotlight, whether he wanted it or not. Confronted by the Scottish Parliament’s passage of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, the government in Westminster had been faced with a choice of whether to nod it through or block it.

It’s not much of a stretch to suggest that the last two prime ministers would have cheerfully grabbed the opportunity to have a fight over this. Rishi Sunak is, like his Scottish Secretary, more of a conciliator. So the government is trying to have things both ways, blocking the bill but also hinting that it might be possible to pass it with tweaks. Now the prime minister just needed someone to smother the debate. In this capacity, there was no-one better he could have summoned than the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Jack is the wet blanket of news. Copies of his speeches are licensed for use as fire retardants in residential dwellings. His interviews are a cure for sleeping disorders. To listen to him speak is to feel one’s mind release itself from the concerns of the world and float off into a meditative state of blissful peace. If anyone could make this dull, it was Jack.

In the first place, he was very keen to make it clear that his decision to block the bill – the first time the UK government has used its power to do this – was very much a move driven by legal concerns, he said, and not by views about trans rights. “Let’s just take the heat out of this debate,” he pleaded, more than once.

Three-quarters of the chamber was sparsely populated

Sitting next to him was Kemi Badenoch, whose brief includes women and equalities. If Jack can be used to suppress fires, Badenoch is handy for lighting them. It’s occasionally suggested, quite unfairly, that there are members of the Scottish National Party who could start a fight in an empty room. Badenoch could start a war. She was not, however, being allowed to speak in this statement.

As with any issue concerning Scottish devolution, three-quarters of the chamber was sparsely populated and one quarter, the section of benches occupies by the SNP, was packed. They were, you’ll be astonished to learn, furious. When Jack, in his blandest tones, suggested that some nationalists might be seeking narrow political advantage from the issue, the SNP exploded. On the front bench Chris Law, a tartan-suited giant of a man, raised both his arms in outrage at the idea that Nicola Sturgeon – Nicola Sturgeon, a woman so pure of heart that the angry waters of the Forth are stilled in her presence – might try to use a sensitive issue to advance the cause of independence. The very idea was inconceivable.

If Jack wanted to be dull, his Labour opposite number Ian Murray wanted to be utterly forgotten. Labour has calculated that there is no winning side in this. Does the opposition support the blocking of the bill? Hard to know. The position seems to be that they wouldn’t start from here. “Find a backbone!” yelled someone on the SNP benches.

You could see why Murray was keeping his head down when the discussion opened up to backbenchers. Labour’s Rosie Duffield argued that the bill would erode women’s rights, while Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle, at the opposite end of the bench, loudly and repeatedly sighed: “Oh Rosie!” There are divisions in all the parties over this, but only Labour was having them out on the floor of the chamber.

“Think long and hard before you speak,” Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, would implore MPs afterwards, a request that left me wondering if he’d ever met any of them. If Jack had been sent out to insist that the government didn’t want a row about gender recognition, Tory backbenchers didn’t seem to have got the memo. Many seem keen to have a fight about this. Badenoch might well be willing to start it.

Some things, though, are as steady as the rain in Glasgow, and one of them is Ian Blackford, recently deposed as SNP leader in Westminster. His speaking time is now restricted, which actually makes him rather more effective. He rose from the backbenches and denounced the government and the Scottish Secretary before thundering: “The only way we can protect our Parliament is by Scotland becoming independent!”

Jack stood up to reply. “I just won a ten pound note,” he told the chamber. A savage burn from a fire blanket.