Seriously, what is the world coming to when in the Mother of Parliaments, the most powerful politician in the country invokes his own mother to castigate the Leader of the Opposition.
Here’s their exchange:
The Prime Minister: I am very proud of the NHS in Oxfordshire and everyone who works in it. Having met the head of the Oxford Radcliffe trust recently, I know that he supports the move towards more seven-day services. That is absolutely vital.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab): Ask your mother!
The Prime Minister: Ask my mother? I know what my mother would say. She would look across the Dispatch Box and say, “Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem.”
Jeremy Corbyn: If we are talking of motherly advice, my late mother would have said, “Stand up for the principle of a health service free at the point of use for everybody.” That is what she dedicated her life to, as did many of her generation.
Corbyn comes out of this with some credit, but this rather personal criticism comes from the Prime Minister comes just two days after the Commons collapsed in hilarity over a Tory MP’s jibe.
Labour MPs are more than capable of being just as rowdy. Remember what they used to do to Julian Huppert every time he got up to speak. I’ll never forget the time when Willie Rennie was called a “Scottish Git” by Tory MPs while a Labour frontbencher smirked. He was introducing a bill enabling driving instructors to be suspended from the national register and explaining how he’d been motivated to do so by his constituent’s experience of being sexually assaulted by her driving instructor.