The Sketch: A funny thing happened to Hoon on the way to the Commons

The war must be going very well indeed. Geoff Hoon has grown so much in confidence that he ventured into the most dangerous territory a minister of defence could. He made a joke. His reputation may not recover.

Mr Hoon is known, for reasons always unclear to the Sketch, as a safe pair of hands. Such people never make jokes. Jokes confuse and annoy people. Which is why Mr Hoon's reputation is so baffling. He has always managed to confuse and annoy people without having to resort to jokes.

He was asked about reports of looting. He said he had heard Iraqi citizens had been "liberating items that had been in the charge of the regime".

A ripple of approval encouraged him to say that he regarded such behaviour as "good practice". It was "redistributing wealth among the Iraqi people".

My colleague said it was unusual to hear a government minister condoning looting. I agreed. Until I reflected on the fact that Gordon Brown will be delivering his Budget tomorrow, and he is responsible for taking £200bn extra a year from the economy since he first came to power.

Mr Hoon produced a second piece of humour. The role of the Iraqi air force had not been very important, he suggested.

It had, in fact, been confined to ground operations. There was a third joke, which needn't detain us. Three in a row! Saki wrote a short story, did he not, about an early Geoff Hoon who started making jokes. "A country that produced more history than it could consume locally," he began. One thing led to another (it's a slippery slope). I forget how it ended. With vultures circling and tearing his pink and twitching body to bloody shreds? That sounds familiar.

Tam Dalyell had several opportunities to repeat his denunciation of Tony Blair as a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague and be tried – accusations he has made in magazines and newspapers. The Sketch deplores these announcements being made first in the media rather than in the House.

The Speaker called Maria Eagle. Angela Eagle stood up. It may have been the other way round. "I assume you mean me," she said. They are identical twins, one of whom sits on the front bench occasionally. Angela is the lesser of two Eagles. Unless it is the other way round, they are quite unnecessarily identical. She urged Mr Hoon not to be complacent. He agreed, vaguely.

A number of members objected to the use of cluster bombs. Mr Hoon told them that the safety of our troops was paramount. He asked Kate Hoey whether she was prepared to risk the lives of our servicemen by not using such weapons. He rather spoilt his argument by then revealing that the people most at risk were actually the British troops sent in later to clear up unexploded bomblets. Never mind. By the time that happens we'll all have forgotten what was said yesterday.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com