QUENTIN LETTS: Nothing to see right here, individuals. Alas, the minister’s strangulated, panicky timbre – plus, maybe, a barely sweaty bulge to his eyeballs – recommended in any other case

Rachel Reeves declined to answer a mid-morning Commons discussion of the state of the economy (or what is left of it after Ms Reeves’s Budget). Whitehall aides possibly couldn’t prise her fingers off the banister at the Treasury. My wife and I used to have similar trouble at home when our daughter Eveleen was little and did not want to attend primary school. We would have to uncurl each gripping finger one at a time, holding Eveleen off the floor in a horizontal position while she screamed ‘no, I’m NOT going to school!’ Twenty years on, she has, I should say, turned out beautifully.

Anyway, Ms Reeves was a no-show for an urgent question put by Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. ‘Wherisheee?’ twittered Tories when they realised the Chancellor was not coming. They were not told. It may have been that she was packing her pyjamas for her trip to China. It may equally have been that she was locked in the smallest room, staring down the khazi after seeing the latest data from the markets.

With the Commons exchanges about to start, the Government had to field a minister. But who? City minister Tulip Siddiq was off games – little Tulip is in a spot of bother over a connection with her aunt who used to run Bangladesh. Parliamentary secretary Emma Reynolds was too junior. Exchequer secretary James Murray was too gloomy. Mr Murray has the crepuscular presence of a mortuary attendant.

Normally a model of languid politeness, Darren Jones came bowling into the chamber wearing a corrugated brow, writes QUENTIN LETTS

‘Get Darren Jones to do it!’ wailed Downing Street. And so it fell to dainty Darren, Treasury chief secretary, who as I may have mentioned before resembles the 1950s comic film actor Richard Wattis. Normally a model of languid politeness, he came bowling into the chamber wearing a corrugated brow. Here, one gathered, was a man whose Thursday routine had been brutally disrupted.

Mr Stride put his urgent question. And off Mr Jones shot. The pace was worthy of Beethoven’s 7th. Allegretto con pistachio nuts. Dainty Darren, normally so silken, was shouting and gabbling and waving his arms like a Neapolitan traffic cop.

This Mediterranean delivery did not match the desired import of his words, which had been written to reassure MPs that there was no need to worry about the economy. Mr Jones’s script, still warm from the office printer, claimed that it was ‘normal for the price and yield of gilts to vary’. No cause for alarm. Nothing to see here, people. Alas, his strangulated, panicky timbre – plus, perhaps, a slightly sweaty bulge to his eyeballs – suggested otherwise. So did the absence of any other Treasury minister. How lonely Mr Jones looked.

Mr Stride calmly noted that Mr Jones had given a ‘slightly anxious and breathless’ performance. Mr Jones: ‘I have not even had my first cup of coffee yet this morning!’ He almost bit the air as he said this. Poor chap had plainly had a hell of a morning.

For the rest of the 50 minutes he railed against Liz Truss. Attacking the last PM but one was the only tactic for Labour. Halfway through there came a whiff of formaldehyde and we discovered that the mortuary attendant – Brother Murray – had materialised to show support for the juddering, squeaking Jones. It was barely 11am yet already Mr Murray had a fuzz of five o’clock shadow on his cadaverous cheeks. Radiating funereal woe, he cracked a graveyard smile and the temperature dropped another degree.

Amid his fevered rants against Ms Truss, Mr Jones repeatedly averred that the Government still saw no need for further tax rises. Labour MPs chose to ignore the likely consequences of that (ie cuts to government spending).

The Lib Dems’ spokesman, Clive Jones, moaned about both Labour and the Tories, and said there must be no cut in spending to the NHS. This second Jones is a leading contender for the title of ‘most boring MP in the new Commons’. Speaker Hoyle, perhaps hypnotised by his dullness, accidentally called him ‘Clive James’ one day. Oh, if only.