The Sketch: Just what will it take to get this House moving?

Down the back of the House of Commons close to the door, next to the exit, lies the Liberal Democrat wasteland. A region so dismal that no news ever escapes from it. It's where Labour's going to be sitting next year with the other regional parties. They won't be the official opposition. Alan Johnson won't have a despatch box to lean on. They'll get just two questions at PMQs and no one will listen. The Today programme will ask David Miliband on every other year and Evan Davis will say: "So, what do you think?" And 28 seconds later it'll be, "And that's all we've got time for. Now, Sandra Gidley, what's on YOUR mind?"

Yesterday, sprawling across three bench places was Labour's Graham Allen, the big fellow. Sometime whip, constitutional grandee, coup organiser, and – if so – a total, triple-time, terminal tosser.

What does it take?

The Prime Minister throws his mobile at Harriet and blinds her; he lights a cigarette during PMQs; he makes Susan Boyle Minister of Health and Nick Griffin Home Secretary; he kills Barry Sheerman with a chair. And the plotters say, "We've had a surge of new names on our list. He's really on probation. If he doesn't raise his game he won't survive the party conference." But on inspection the list's new names are Wayne Kerr, Michel le Souris and Gordon Brown.

The Commons is now a cabaret that no one attends to. We'd gone in to raise a glass to Alistair Darling and toast his powers of survival (he surely won't be there next year). But the chump had gone to some Euro finance meeting.

So the MPs sat chatting. Denis Skinner stood up to ask a question and engaged the opposition in a four or five-beat dialogue about Bolsover's results. The Speaker sat dreaming. Nobody is listening – but then no one is saying anything either.

The Prime Minister is making a statement today on cleaning up politics – part of his Campaign to Renew Politics in a Progressive Consensus ("Big Lie" for short). In his new, well-behaved mode he must have had quite a detailed discussion with Cameron or Clegg? Not a word. "The first we heard about it was on gallery news," one said. They're to be told about the details "in due course". It'll be another YouTube fiasco. Brown just isn't the consultative sort and anyone who believes his promises to change should check into the nearest electro-shock clinic for re-education.

Briefly into the Lords to the reshuffle's only winner. His Highness of the Supreme Council (of which he is the only member), the Emperor of Mandelstan (it's where we all live now), the Good Lord Peter.

I can't tell you what he was saying; it may not even be legal to do so. We had come to prostrate ourselves, and that we did. We all feel better.

simoncarr@sketch.sc