By the time David Cameron got to update MPs on assorted EU crises in Ukraine, Greece, Libya and runaway-to-Syria schoolgirls on Monday, some backbenchers were sufficiently exhausted to need another half-term break. Why so?
Not just because the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, was rash enough to raise the HSBC tax scandal again.
In doing so he gave George (where is he?) Osborne the chance to launch the most savage counter-offensive since pro-Russia forces last broke the Minsk ceasefire. It was painful but, as usual in these situations, both sides blamed each other for starting it.
No, the exhaustion set in almost as soon as post-break MPs plonked down on the green leather benches for defence question time. An opportunity for Michael Fallon, still a trainee defence secretary, to rattle his sabre as he did last week about the “clear and present danger” posed to Nato by Vladimir Putin’s Russia?
Not a bit of it. Downing Street had hosed Fallon down. Thatcherite holdover he may be, but he was back on message.
Britain’s active military operations are “currently against Isis and Ebola”. It has 600 personnel working to supply Iraq against Isis (we have 1,200 in the Falklands) with bullets, machine guns, bomb detectors and other kit which he kept describing as being “gifted” – as if they were a tax scam.
But Russian incursions against UK airspace and waters? “We must respond, but not in the sense of being provoked,” he said. Dear me, no. We must ensure that any incursion is “er, properly, er, properly dealt with”.
It was the same with separatist incursions in Ukraine. MPs on both sides stressed the need to stand up to Putin, but nothing rash from Britain’s cuts-ravished armed forces. Any more trouble from you, Vlad, and you can expect, er, more sanctions.
What got them much more excited was the need to enforce the military covenant that looks after ex-soldiers and get more of them on the housing ladder via the coalition’s Help to Buy scheme: 4,000 so far, only 20% officers.
Taken together with slightly massaged figures on the recruitment drive to boost the reserves (up 560 net this year), it will not have put the fear of God into the Russian military attache. The average age of reservists is mid-30s.
Balls v Osborne was more frightening. The chancellor has been so invisible lately that his mum must have worried that he’d slipped off to Syria. Not so.
Ed’s urgent question posed five questions about HSBC. Osborne contemptuously spat them all back on persuasive grounds.
The alleged offences took place on Labour’s watch, were revealed in 2009 and Stephen Green, HSBC’s then-chairman, had first been lured into Whitehall by Gordon Brown, the Two Eds’ fairy godfather. Labour MPs did their best to rally, but it was an aggressive first-round knockout.
After that the prime minister’s report from the latest EU summit could only be an anticlimax. Some MPs seem to have forgotten Britain is still a member. Dave couldn’t work up much enthusiasm either.
Europe will improve its efforts to curb internet grooming and Syria-bound runaways. Russia can expect more sanctions. Greece’s Alexis Tsipras should cut a deal with Brussels which would be in Britain’s interests, but it’s the eurozone’s problem to solve, not ours. Weren’t we clever to stay out?
Arch-Eurosceptic Bill Cash protested that Germany (not Russia) seems to be getting over-assertive.
If I were a German creditor, I’d want to get my money back too, but it’s all a matter for them, said Dave. Welcome to bit-player Britain.
