Political column – March 7

That's right – nothing much has happened! So far.

With just three weeks to go to B-Day – and if you are still confident of that happening, you'll believe anything – Mrs May has had a relaxing break.

It is one of those rare weeks which has been an oasis. That is, it has not been described by commentators as The Most Critical Week Of Her Premiership.

We've had plenty of those most critical weeks, and there will be another most critical week next week when those commentators will be falling over themselves breathlessly in excitement as the tension builds in Westminster and those crucial votes loom.

Everything is at stake. On March 30 all flights could be grounded, massive queues build up at the docks, medicine supplies could run low, the first of 700,000 jobs will be lost, and you will have to pay more for your apple crumble.

What is wrong with you people? Why are you not panicking?

In the absence of anything happening at the moment, relatively speaking, I bring you some vignettes.

MPLayla Moran of the Liberal Democrats: "We need to be careful with our language and the words betrayal and traitor and these kind of things entering our public discourse..."

She then moved seamlessly on to embrace exactly the language which she had just condemned: "I'll tell you what would be a betrayal..."

That's politicians for you.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn has not had his troubles to seek with the rumbling row over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It is really unfair for people to blame him. After all, what's it to do with him – he's only the party leader.

And how can he be expected to do anything before the party conference has given a collective ruling on policy? People need to hang on until the conference in Brighton in September gives him its instructions.

Talking of things being nothing to do with people, Prime Minister's Questions yesterday was a relatively serious and sombre affair in which Mr Corbyn challenged Theresa May, a former Home Secretary of course, on knife crime and falling policing numbers.

Crime had gone down under Labour, but up under the Tories – violent crime had doubled, he said.

Mr Corbyn had had a letter from "Mike" in Gosport who said it was now an unsafe town in which to live.

To disbelief from the opposition benches, Mrs May said more resources were going to the police. Blame for terrible knife crime lay with the perpetrators.

And if Mr Corbyn was so worried, she said, why did he twice vote against tougher measures against those carrying knives?

One of the more bizarre revelations is that in a speech to the Commons a few days ago junior minister Therese Coffey slipped in six references to lyrics from the popular music combo (now defunct) S Club Seven.

This explains a lot. I have long suspected that the script for the Brexit debates has been lifted wholesale from Dad's Army, with Leave MPs inspired by Captain Mainwaring, and Remain drawing liberally on the words of Private Frazer.

Lastly, may I pay tribute to Jonathan Dimbleby, who is leaving Any Questions? in June after 32 years in the chair, by turning the tables and posing a question to him, drawing on his own inimitable style.

Here goes: "If, with the way things are, and the way things could be, and given that you will know that after everything that has happened over the past 32 years there are some who claim, and do claim, what they in fact claim, and you will have heard the views, the very strident views, of the Prime Minister on this point although there are some in her Cabinet – her own Cabinet! – who disagree with her, and with the prospect of chaos with Brexit, although of course nobody can tell but if you read the forecasts they are pretty scary, could it not be the case, whether or not you agree with all that, that if you could and had to, given all that you know now, that you would... ask me to repeat the question?"