PMQs Sketch: The most dire poverty is not at work or in the home but in the quality of political debate

Labour introduced the minimum wage, the Conservatives the national living wage, so this in-work poverty thing can't possibly be real, can it?

Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons (PA)

Sometimes I wonder whether British political life is merely post-ironic or fully auto-parodic. When a Prime Minister spends seven weeks warning that if she loses "just six seats" it will be "not me but Jeremy Corbyn sitting down at the negotiating table with Brussels," then loses fourteen and carries on, to use her own catch phrase, as if "nothing has changed" it is not surprising that she is unable to utter a single word that is not eminently ridiculous.

But sometimes it is impossible not to entertain the possibility that she is actually doing it on purpose.

Jeremy Corbyn, who, in a prospect infinitely more terrifying than mere Brexit, grows more Prime Ministerial by the day, began Prime Minister’s Questions with some cutely phrased badinage on whether the “overpaid public servants” recently criticised by the Chancellor were in fact Theresa May's own subordinate ministers.

A strong opening jab that connected with its target. But why, at this point, would the Prime Minister choose to punch herself in the face?

“I recognise,” she began, “as I did when I stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street a year ago, that there are people who are just about managing, who find life a struggle."

On a day when all anyone wants to talk about is unacceptable pay packets in the public sector (this time, at the BBC), it cannot be ignored that there are thirty more Labour MPs in the House of Commons than there were six weeks ago, and not a single one of them shouted “Yes, you!”

That is, frankly, a dereliction of duty.

In the last Prime Minister’s Questions before the long, summer recess, the debate did not move on from public sector pay. One suspects it will not have done so by the time these particular public servants have returned from their six week break.

Theresa May thinks everything’s fine because the Conservative government has created "three million more jobs".

Jeremy Corbyn said that’s no good because "55 per cent of households in poverty are households in work." There might be low unemployment, but "the reality that millions of people face is low wages and poverty at home."

Theresa May said the Conservatives "had introduced the national living wage, the biggest pay rise ever for low earners."

Jeremy Corbyn said, actually, "Labour introduced the minimum wage in the face of Tory opposition."

So that’s helpful, then. If you do happen to be in in-work poverty, one comfort is that you probably don’t get long enough off at lunch to tune in to Prime Minister’s Questions of a Wednesday and see how it can’t possibly be the fault of either of the two main parties, who are apparently tripping over each other to pay low earners more, and who are somehow stuck in poverty all the same.

The Prime Minister built to her usual crescendo.

“The Labour government crashed the economy! The Conservatives had to come in and sort it out!” she boomed. “What he wants is a country living beyond its means Where the future generations pay for its mistakes! That’s Labour’s way and we will never do that!”

Future generations paying for its mistakes. That’s Labour’s way and we will never do that. These are some words to cherish over the coming months and years. Post-ironic or auto-parodic? You decide.