This parliament still has, potentially, three whole years to run, and yet it already feels zombified. Each week it goes through the motions, the same lame jokes, the same pointless questions, the same lingering sense of exhaustion and decay. It’s like the end of the French Third Republic but with fewer cigarettes and an even less impressive defence policy. They had the Maginot Line, we have the recycling of Dan Jarvis. Labour is stuck in a depressed, sexless marriage with itself and is betting everything on the deranged idea that a frisson with Andy Burnham at the end of this week will somehow spice things up again.

Will the Iran deal destroy J.D. Vance?

David Lammy’s heart wasn’t in DPMQs

Rachel Reeves owes Britain’s supermarkets an apology

Attendance in the Commons was not good, with empty seats on both Labour and Tory benches. At the far end on the backest of back benches sat Wes Streeting. Claire Coutinho, the shadow education secretary, had lost whatever strange competition the Tories have to be the one who has to ask Lammy questions. She decided to lead on energy costs, and the government’s continued reliance on Russian oil and gas.

The shadow of an increasingly out of control Ed Miliband lingered over her questioning, like the love........

© The Spectator