The liaison super-committee has an unavoidable tri-annual encounter with the prime minister

An afternoon with Keir Starmer isn’t necessarily many people’s idea of fun. A period of time when every minute feels like five.

Sadly, for the select committee chairs who make up the liaison super-committee, they didn’t have the option of saying no. This was one of their unavoidable tri-annual encounters with the prime minister. Still, at least they all had the Xmas recess to look forward to at the end of the week. They would need a long lie down.

You’d think MPs would be lining up to decry the US president’s support for far-right nationalists. Instead, only backbenchers and a few junior ministers bothered to turn up

’Twas the fortnight before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Apart from a few exceptions. The Labour backbencher Matt Western had managed to secure an urgent question on President Trump’s new national security strategy and the Commons itself was remarkable for its absences. A roll-call of dishonour.

Take Nigel Farage. You would have thought he would have had a lot to say on the subject. After all, when Barack Obama had intervened in the Brexit referendum campaign to say the UK would be at the back of the queue for any trade deal with the US, Nige had been outraged. How dare the president try to interfere with the democratic processes of another sovereign country? So now that Donald Trump was threatening to do much the same thing in countries all across Europe, surely this was the time for Nige to make a stand. This was surely a point of principle for him. Were he to have any.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems’ Gentleman Ed rips into Starmer for staying silent on The Donald’s US security strategy

With little more than a week to go until the Christmas recess, the Commons is in festive overdrive. Demob happy. A few minutes in to the year’s penultimate prime minister’s questions with MPs from both sides shouting and cheering, the speaker interrupted proceedings to say: “We don’t need the panto auditions any more.” To which the natural response was: “Ooh yes we do.” Because that’s pretty much the whole purpose of PMQs at the best of times. A feelgood experience for some. A feelbad experience for others. Noise with no substance.

No one embraces the panto spirit more than Kemi Badenoch. Kemi has come to realise that the bar is actually quite low for her to remain as Tory leader. All she has to do is be a little bit better than Keir Starmer at PMQs. Which is turning out to be a lot less difficult than she imagined. Sometimes just standing up is enough.

Tory leader took on Brexit, benefits claimants and grooming gangs in a presser that probably should have been an email

If a press conference takes place and no one is around to take notice, can it be said to have really happened? Sometimes the most interesting thing is the person saying the thing they did not mean anyone to notice. It was always thus with Brexit.

Time was when a press conference was a relatively rare event. Called only after diplomatic summits or when there was an important piece of news to be announced. Now, though, the format has been so downgraded it is being used for when any politician needs some attention. When the feeling that no one is listening to them becomes unbearable.