“The whole of the country,” Rail Minister Huw Merriman declared, trying his best to sound like he believed it, “benefits from Old Oak Common.”

Merriman was facing down a largely empty House of Commons on the question of HS2, the always promised, never-delivered fast line from London to Birmingham and beyond. Late last week, the government announced that the line would be delayed again, and would also be stopping in West London. The terminus appears to be being built between a prison and a cemetery. Write your own jokes.

HS2 is now entering its difficult teenage years, without even the compensation of a growth spurt

Merriman, though, was determined to make the best of the situation. It was, he said, a good thing that the trains would stop at Old Oak Common. That was as close to London as a lot of people wanted to get. Louise Haigh, for Labour, was unimpressed. “Is there anything more emblematic of this failed government,” she asked, “than their flagship levelling up project that neither makes it to the north or to central London?”

The chamber was divided into three groups. MPs whose seats were at the end of the HS2 line were annoyed because it was going to be late. MPs whose seats were along the route were annoyed because it was being built at all. MPs whose seats were nowhere near the line were upset that their constituents were paying for a distant railway. Several Welsh MPs were particularly vocal about this. The obvious solution is to run the high-speed line from London to Birmingham through Wales. At least that would justify the time it’s taking to build.

First proposed in 2009, HS2 is now entering its difficult teenage years, without even the compensation of a growth spurt. Gavin Newlands, for the SNP, inquired in which decade high speed rail would reach the Scottish border. “Which century?” shouted a Labour MP.

If the delay is frustrating for the travelling public, for people living along the route it is a source of more intense stress. Alec Shelbrooke’s West Yorkshire constituency is on one of the sections of the line that is now so far in the future that he doubted it would ever be built. His voters, he said, had been “suffering for a decade”, with restrictions on what they can do with their properties. Merriman promised answers “shortly”. Shelbrooke rolled his eyes. “When?” he shouted back.

She may be getting her foreign affairs analysis from CBeebies

With Merriman flattened, we got onto the really important business of the day, arguing about Gary Lineker. Julia Lopez had been sent to represent the government, though she was determined to try to stay out of things. “The government has no say on the BBC operational or editorial day-to-day decisions or staffing matters,” she said at the start, and this was the line she stuck to.

Lucy Powell, Labour’s Culture spokeswoman, was having none of it. She claimed Lineker had been removed from Match of the Day after “a Tory cancel campaign orchestrated by ministers and members opposite with their friends in the press”. This seems to be giving a bit too much credit to the government, which as we had just been established isn’t even up to running a railway. “What does she think it looks like to the outside world that a much-loved sports presenter is taken off air for tweeting something that government doesn’t like?” Powell asked. “It sounds more like Putin’s Russia to me!” If Powell thinks that this is how Vladimir Putin operates, then she may be getting her foreign affairs analysis from CBeebies. Come back to us when BBC executives start falling out of windows.

If Powell seemed to be worked up, it was nothing to the lather that backbenchers were in. Sammy Wilson, for the DUP, gave a short speech that can be summed up as “No Surrender to Match Of The Day!” There were a lot of Labour questions about the appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC chair. Lopez insisted this had happened “in a transparent way”, meaning, presumably, that we could all see through it.

But the real excitement was on the Conservative benches. Sir John Hayes denounced “avaricious, smug, arrogant football commentators”. Alun Cairns warned against being “pushed around by the overprivileged and overpaid elite”. Tom Hunt accused Lineker of using freelance status “to avoid paying taxes”. No wonder commentators worry that the Tories are losing touch with their ideology. If they aren’t the party of a rich elite avoiding tax and pushing everyone else around, what are they?