COMING soon ... The Budget! Starring Rishi Sunak as the man with the red briefcase. But will it be a drama, a thriller, or even a horror? The Prime Minister is giving few clues today, which makes for a damp squib of a PMQs session despite his dramatic announcement of a roadmap out of lockdown just two days ago.

Labour's Derek Twigg kicks things off with an urgent plea for an overhaul of the self-isolation payments system, telling the Prime Minister a council in his constituency has exhausted its supply of funding despite strict eligibility criteria. At this vital stage in the pandemic, those most in need cannot afford to self-isolate.

Sounds like a pretty urgent situation, doesn't it? If people are spreading the virus as we speak, that has serious implications for Step 1 of England's road map out of lockdown, due to be taken on March 8. So what does Boris Johnson have to say? Bla bla bla, £4.3 billion, "more from the Chancellor next week". Well that's reassuring. Take your time, guys.

READ MORE: SNP urge Rishi Sunak to rule out austerity and protect jobs in UK Budget

Keir Starmer appears to have spent the February recess consulting the Richard Leonard Guide to Falling Flat, starting by endorsing the PM's "cautious, but irreversible" approach to lifting lockdown and then posing a weird question, asking him to condemn those who suggest Covid statistics seem to have been manipulated and that the road map is based on "dodgy assumptions and false modelling". Johnson replies by defending the basis for his plans, then Starmer moves in for his gotcha: "All those comments came from his own MPs!"

Tumbleweed. Oh dear. Did no-one tell the assembled Labour MPs they were meant to jeer at this point? Was Angela Rayner supposed to bang a drum and tap a cymbal?

Moving swiftly on, Starmer highlights the fact that three in 10 people who should be self-isolating aren't doing so. The payment needs to be made available to "everyone who needs it", so will the PM fix this? He's a bit vague on exactly how this should be done, giving Johnson the opportunity to emphasise that the eligibility criteria have already been broadened to include parents and guardians having to stay off work.

Starmer says people in low-paid jobs are bottom of the government's list of priorities, but still doesn't spell out just how narrow the current eligibility criteria are. The response? "He'll be hearing more about that next week from the Chancellor". Great. I'm sure Covid-19 will be listening, and accordingly taking a week off.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson refuses to back Beijing Olympics boycott over Uighur crisis

“I don’t expect the PM to pre-empty what’s in the Budget,” says Starmer, pressing on. “If I want that I can read it on the front page of The Times.” A single audible snigger from the benches behind. Jeez, who needs opponents when your right honourable friends have taken a vow of silence? Starmer wants Johnson to agree that now is not the time for tax rises, which catches the PM slightly off guard given the glaring mismatch with Labour’s pre-election manifesto. Starmer wants to highlight the Tories’ history of starving local authorities of cash, but he’s getting absolutely nowhere and is out-gunned (or at least massively out-jeered) by those opposite. “This is another PMQs with yet again no answers,” he says. “Exactly!” someone pipes up, seemingly awoken from a nap. But it’s too little, too late.

Ian Blackford, ever the optimist, asks: “Will the Prime Minister rule out a return to Tory austerity cuts, and commit to a major fiscal stimulus of at least 5% of GDP?”. A “find out next week” will not suffice here – not when Johnson has the opportunity to lambast the Scottish Government for its misuse of the billions so generously gifted to it by the UK, and lambast the SNP for talking about the second referendum that all evidence suggests the Scottish people want.

So that’ll be a no then. He won’t rule out a return to Tory austerity.  “All they want to do is break up Britain with another referendum, and I think that is the last thing this country needs at the moment,” says Johnson, and perhaps he’s right. Assuming by “this country” he means England.