The National:

THERE’S an end-of-term feel to this, the last PMQs before the Easter break. The Speaker hasn’t allowed them to bring in board games but it appears they’ve been watching Dad’s Army repeats in their offices ahead of Keir Starmer’s interrogation of Boris Johnson about cuts to the UK’s armed forces.

Starmer wants to know why Johnson pledged in the Conservative manifesto to maintain troop numbers only to this week confirm a cut from 82,000 to 72,500 by 2025. “Did he ever intend to keep his promise?” he asks.

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Well indeed he intended to keep a promise – just not that one. He is to increase spending on the armed forces by the biggest amount since the Cold War and besides, didn’t Jeremy Corbyn want to pull the UK out of Nato? Oh and by the way, the number of troops stands at 100,000 if you include the reserves, so just disregard those figures mentioned in the defence review. “It’s wonderful to hear the new spirit of jingo that seems to have enveloped some of the Labour benches”, he says. “They don’t like it up ‘em, Mr Speaker.”

Oh, how they laugh! Starmer reads out a tabloid story about Johnson’s false promises while someone oohs and ahhhs dramatically in the background, then the PM blasts half of the Labour front bench for being less than gung ho about mutually assured destruction. Starmer fires back: “You just can’t trust the Conservatives to protect our armed forces”. Cue uproar!

“It’s the Labour party who are consistently weak on protecting this country,” blasts Johnson, noting that the shadow front bench “couldn’t even agree to maintain Britain’s nuclear deterrent”. I must need to unblock my ears because it sounded a lot like someone shouted “SHITE!” in response.

It also sounds like Speaker Lindsay Hoyle just said he believes no-one in the House of Commons would support “Kill the Bill” – is he perhaps misunderstanding what these protests are about? LibDem Ed Davey prefers “drop these Draconian laws” but I’m pretty sure the sentiment is the same.

Anyway, time now for Ian Blackford to ask why Johnson isn’t ordering Douglas Ross to stand down as an MP while he tries to get himself elected to the Scottish Parliament. The PM believes the “member for Moray and Ross” is doing an excellent job, suggesting he already has a dual mandate representing his own constituents in the north-east plus some of Blackford’s in the north-west. But I’m sure that was just a slip of the tongue. I’m quite confident Johnson could pick the plucky young Scottish Tory leader out of a line-up and point to his constituency on a map. It really is baffling – baffling! – that the SNP keep insisting he will never put Scotland’s interests first.

WATCH: Boris Johnson appears to call Douglas Ross by wrong name in Commons

Blackford wants to know if the PM really has confidence in a branch leader who doesn’t even have the courage to put himself before the voters in a Scottish constituency. Of course he does! He also has the confidence to chastise Blackford for not mentioning indyref2 while asking these questions, suggesting this is evidence he is “getting nervous”. Ha! Yes, that must be it.

The SNP’s Allan Dorans turns this back on the PM, asking why he won’t agree to grant a Section 30 order. “It is because he is fearful of the likely outcome?” No, of course not, it’s because the priority is building back better and people are “frankly amazed to hear the SNP still in these circumstances banging on about their constitutional obsessions”.

Hmm, a Prime Minister too cowardly to put his cuts to the armed forces to a Commons vote, instead preferring to fiddle the figures? A so-called Scottish leader too feart to even stand in a Scottish constituency? A British establishment hiding behind a soundbite to deny Scotland the right to an indyref2 they know they would lose? There seems to be a theme developing here. But hey, at least we’re increasing our stockpile of nuclear warheads by 40%. Nothing says bravely building back better than that.