I’ve never seen Boris Johnson look quite so lost at the despatch box

That was Keir Starmer’s best day in parliament so far. He had the prime minister on the defensive, and he didn’t miss the chance to humiliate him further. He asked all the questions he should have asked yesterday, and Boris Johnson was quite unable to rally his MPs behind him.

The Labour leader started by asking why other people had resigned over breaches of coronavirus rules – Allegra Stratton, Neil Ferguson and Matt Hancock – but not him. The prime minister said he regretted Stratton’s departure not least because she had come up with a good slogan for the Cop26 climate summit.

Johnson soon sounded as if he were begging Starmer to change the subject. He tried a joke, about being “trapped in some kind of Doctor Who time warp” in which the Labour leader did not yet know that Vladimir Putin had invaded Ukraine, and said that his government was delivering on the people’s priorities, which were to “power out of the problems that Covid has left us”. He wondered if “those are all subjects on which he could reasonably ask questions now”.

Starmer had a better idea, which was to ask the question asked by Sarah Jones, the Labour MP, yesterday, which had caused the prime minister to hesitate, stumble and waffle – the one time he had found himself off balance in his otherwise successful sustained grovel: “Does the prime minister actually accept that he broke the law?”

This time, Johnson had to take it on the chin: “Yes, Mr Speaker.” Instead of yesterday’s indirect admission after a pause, “I completely accept that the police are right”, this time he finally owned up to the title of the law-breaking prime minister. He repeated that he had paid the fixed penalty notice, and tried to move on: “What I think the country, and what I think the house would really rather do is get on with the things for which we were elected – to deliver on our promises to the British people.”

He mentioned energy policy, but as he hasn’t got one, he couldn’t even convince himself that it mattered, while the Conservatives behind him, who were indeed keen to “get on”, stared bleakly at the opposition benches, wondering if that was where they were going to end up after not too long.

Starmer avoided the invitation to ask about something – anything – else and pointed out that Johnson’s apology the previous day had lasted only as long as it needed to in order “to be clipped for the news”. Once the cameras were off, the prime minister was back to blaming others, Starmer said, including the archbishop of Canterbury and the BBC.

The Conservative benches were sullen because they knew it was true: they had been there in the “private” meeting of Tory MPs last night where their leader criticised Justin Welby for being more critical of the government’s asylum policy than he had been of Putin’s aggression. Starmer did the devastatingly simple thing of looking up what the archbishop had actually said about Putin’s war – he called it “an act of great evil” – and quoting it back at Johnson.

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Johnson was now in full spluttering deflection mode. He was reduced to unadorned insult, saying that Starmer “must be out of his tiny mind” for suggesting that he had accused the BBC of “not being critical enough of Putin”. Johnson protested, apparently genuinely, that he had not said anything last night about the BBC’s coverage of Putin – implying that he had attacked the BBC only for its reporting of the Rwanda asylum policy. He demanded that Starmer withdraw his comment, but Tory MPs didn’t seem to understand his indignation.

Johnson called Starmer “a Corbynista in a smart Islington suit”. Starmer responded, almost under his breath: “Mr Corbyn doesn’t have the [Labour] whip.” Johnson said that Starmer “would have elected a Putin apologist” as prime minister, which seemed to be only another measure of the prime minister’s desperation.

At one point, he asked the cabinet ministers sitting next to him: “How many has he had?” He obviously felt that Starmer had had more than his allotted six questions. He was like a boxer saying it must be time for the bell.

Not even the cries of “More!” orchestrated by the Tory whips could cover Johnson’s embarrassment. Once again, the noise from the Labour side of the Commons was louder and more genuine than from the government benches. Many of them feel genuine contempt for the prime minister and they sense they are winning. As Johnson struggled to make himself heard above the shouts, he seemed to fear that they may be right.