QUENTIN LETTS at PMQs: The solely cupboard ministers who regarded cheerful have been Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting. Might they be fancying their probabilities?

Ding ding! After the first five months of the Labour Government the fighters returned to their stools. 

Mr Speaker rang the bell on the last PMQs of the year and the cornermen rushed ringside to crouch round Sir Keir Starmer and apply sponges, styptic pencils and petroleum jelly to his wounds.

What a rough time he has had. In parliamentary terms there may be at least another nine rounds to go (provided he is not knocked out). 

The sensible part of him must dread it. Sir Keir was not the only one looking dented by events. 

Rachel Reeves, sitting beside him, has in five long months gone from sleek supremo to something shrivelled, downcast, deflated. 

In a J M Synge play she would be shrouded in a grubby blanket, keening and begging for spuds. The transformation in Ms Reeves is terrible to behold. 

It is a caution – against pride, wrath and class envy – of Biblical proportions.  

That Budget did for her what driving through flood waters can do to a low-slung car.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson glowered and shook her inky hairdo in dissent as Kemi Badenoch questioned Sir Keir about his iffy start.

Scary Bridget’s aggression evaporated when Mrs Badenoch mentioned Sir Keir’s abandonment of the Waspi women. 

Ms Phillipson suddenly touched her kneecaps together and splayed her heels: a gesture of awkward defensiveness.

Sir Keir was gabbling, the words spraying out of him. Mrs Badenoch suggested that before the election he had merely ‘played politics’ with the Waspi women. 

In the torrent of words that followed his voice went all turkey-necked and he forgot to breathe. 

Soon he was claiming Mrs Badenoch had recommitted to the triple lock on pensions.Mrs Badenoch, relaxed: ‘He needs to misrepresent me to make his point.’

I often think the Conservative leader could do with raising the tempo and ferocity of her sallies but her composed manner here created a striking contrast with a panicky PM.

Anyway, when it’s aggro you want, ask a Scotsman. Dave Doogan (SNP, Angus & Perthshire Glens) rose to offer a preamble on some of Sir Keir’s alleged policy betrayals. 

Then some unseen switch was flicked. Mr Doogan was instantly inhabited by a blazing, finger-jabbing, Pictish warrior. 

This rangy fulminator claimed that Sir Keir’s untrustworthiness was becoming ‘the defining characteristic of this one-trick pony’ of a PM, and that ‘the people of these islands, particularly in Scotland, treat him with contempt’.

Whoosh! Mr Doogan was yelled at by Labour MPs almost as loudly as he was cheered by various people on the opposition side.

Sir Keir, like many Home Counties Englishmen, is not confident of his ability to pacify a wired-up Caledonian. 

He tried snapping something but in the uproar of the chamber it eluded my cloth ears.Later examination of the match highlights showed Sir Keir boasted that the Scots Nats lost so many seats in July that they now had to sit half-way back in the chamber, and ‘we can hardly hear him’. But few had heard Sir Keir say this.

Things were much quieter but possibly a lot more dangerous for Sir Keir when Diane Abbott (Lab, Hackney N & Stoke Newington) returned to the Waspi women controversy. ‘We did promise them,’ said Ms Abbott gently. Sir Keir pinkened.

He claimed to ‘understand the concern, of course I do’. Behind Ms Abbott the new MP for Alloa, Brian Leishman (Lab), was nodding in open agreement with her. 

Ian Byrne (Ind, Liverpool W Derby) also criticised Sir Keir from the government benches. Ms Reeves had by now almost dissolved into a puddle of misery.

The only Cabinet ministers who looked cheerful were Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting. 

Mad to think, perhaps, given the majority that Sir Keir has, but might they be fancying their chances?

If he is in this bad a way after five months, how fast will he be babbling after five years of Brussels-appeasing economic decay? It may be like listening to Pinky or Perky.