Quentin Letts

To Planet Glue, that far-flung place where life-forms with exalted titles discuss a project to repair the Palace of Westminster.

In a week we will be shacked up with a prime minister little known to King and country. The next General Election need not be called until 2029. We could be lumbered with him for three years.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood took an hour of Commons questions about Ann Widdecombe 's murder. All I could feel was a hollowing sorrow.

Andy Burnham finally opened his beak in the Commons, his first parliamentary contribution since April 2017.

Boxes of Kleenex to the stage door, Norman. Sir Keir Starmer's final PMQs was a blubfest, a three-hanky affair, a display of guilty sentimentalism as bad as Macbeth's distress at the demise of Duncan.

A lively Transport Secretary would be teasing the Europeans for technical incompetence and political disunity. But Heidi Alexander is not high-energy.

Andy Burnham marked his unopposed election as Labour leader with a speech at London's Congress House, that retro temple to union power.

Our 59th Prime Minister sauntered through the door of 10 Downing Street after the usual palaver: a ride in an armour-plated Range Rover, 'kissing hands' at the Palace and then a speech...

History has its mysteries - the building of Stonehenge, the fate of the Mary Celeste - but little is as baffling as the rise of Ed Miliband.

By and large we British do not go in for mass self-flagellation.