QUENTIN LETTS: Lady Gray of Tottenham (Lab) is better known as Sue Gray, the gnomic Whitehall operative who torpedoed Boris Johnson with her report on his lockdown birthday cake.
The speech lasted 33 minutes, half the time of a real Budget. For all Labour's groans when Tories talked of 'an emergency Budget', this nonetheless felt like a big event.
QUENTIN LETTS: Yesterday saw the Bill's last committee stages, that part of the legislative process when a small group of MPs chews over details of a proposed law.
QUENTIN LETTS: Despite jokes about the Chancellor being 'Rachel from customer complaints', the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, is a stronger candidate for that role.
We could have done with Norman Tebbit in the Commons this week, if only for dramatic variety. MPs were discussing welfare cuts that turned out to be soggier than trailed.
QUENTIN LETTS: A couple of days after Nasa 's stranded astronauts returned to Earth it fell to Lucy Powell, Leader of the Commons, to make an allusion to space travel.
QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir Starmer called Israel's latest attacks on Gaza 'truly shocking'. When Sir Keir says 'shocking', which he does quite often, he keeps his lips rigid like a ventriloquist.
Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin (d.1791) was the toyboy of Catherine the Great who allegedly tried to impress his empress by erecting house facades on the banks of the River Dnieper.
Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney arranged for the Prime Minister to deliver his speech at a Hull firm that makes disinfectant and condoms.