Troops rally to Dear Leader

Perhaps it was because it came the day after questions to John "how ya diddlin?" Prescott, the best warm-up man in the business - but there was a strong air of music hall about Prime Minister's Questions today. Loads of panto oohing and aahing, much jolly pointing between rival backbenchers, even a bit of "I say, I say, I say" knockabout between Tony Blair and Dennis Skinner ... what a difference in tone from a fortnight ago.

Then, although he screwed up his questions on tuition fees, Michael Howard bubbled with anticipation about the perils to come for Mr Blair. Today, those perils survived, Mr Howard performed much better but to absolutely no effect.

His first three questions concerned the Government's failure to impose controls on those who may come here from the 10 countries joining the EU on 1 May. Mr Blair had no sensible answer, and seemed to be making up policy on the hoof when he hinted at cutting their benefits. No one cared.

In his second trio, Mr Howard lampooned the Blair habit of, well, making up policy on the hoof. Mr Blair was caught unawares that one such masterstroke - anti-social tenants losing benefits - had been quietly dropped on the day of the top-up fees vote. It should have been a mild humiliation for him.

But no one cared. Half of Mr Howard's problem was that by foolishly getting sucked into Lord Butler's Iraq Intelligence Whitewash Committee, he couldn't ridicule that process - a task neatly carried out instead by a canny Charles Kennedy. The other half is that Mr Blair's confidence is back now his own MPs know he's here to stay.

Gordon Brown didn't turn up to whisper little shards of advice into the PM's ear, but a glance at the ministers who did underlined the mood swing. Where a fortnight ago their knees were crossed away from the PM, now they can't snuggle up closely enough.

At every demi-witticism that fell from his lips, they simpered and smirked. When Mr Blair told Mr Skinner, who'd said that further examination of his motives for war would be as tedious as the plot of Groundhog Day, that he couldn't have put it any better himself, David Blunkett oscillated a clenched fist up and down at the PM's back - a gesture open to wilful misinterpretation but which in fact denotes unfettered mirth.

John Reid grinned dangerously and Tessa Jowell coquettishly at their leader's Wildean responses, and Mr Prescott, generous in appreciating a real headline act, chortled until his chops quivered like jelly.

We mustn't be too snotty about the sycophancy (the bravest of us have a special quality of laughter we reserve for our editors). But I was reminded of the scene in Blackadder when Queenie tires of Francis Drake. The instant she returns to her old favourite, Nursie and Melchett leap out from behind Drake's back and position themselves next to Blackadder.

If the newly rediscovered love of his party for Mr Blair was a subtler exhibition of power politics, there wasn't too much in it. Labour MPs who last week wished Mr Blair dead were hissing at serious questions on inadequate vehicles for British troops in Kabul, as if it were distasteful to challenge the Dear Leader on any martial matter.

The question that brought the House down concerned the 60 million rats in Britain and rehashed the fact that Londoners are never more than nine metres from one. Mr Blair didn't know that, he said, but he does know that in this chamber the gap is never more than nine inches. He also knows, to his relief and joy, that the Westminster rat has a gratifying habit of clambering back aboard a ship that, having flirted with a capsize, has been successfully refloated.