David Cameron won't be around for prime minister's questions on Wednesday, which means that he will have performed once in the past nine weeks. I know Ed Miliband won the encounter before Easter, but this is ridiculous.
He's bound to run out of excuses soon. And, as we baldies know, "I'm washing my hair" doesn't work forever. George Osborne was absent for Treasury questions on Tuesday, too. Admittedly, he was at an EU meeting, but he also has form in the matter of truancy. I was reminded of the old doggerel:
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away!
Which, of course, is what the rebel Tories think about Cameron, and what most MPs think about Osborne.
If the chancellor wasn't there, however, the Archbishop of Toledo was. This may be the first time he has been invoked during the deliberations of the British parliament. The present archbishop, I am sure, is a man of the greatest kindliness and wisdom, though seven of his predecessors headed inquisitions in various forms, and one, the dreaded Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, was Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition between 1507 and 1517.
Michael Palin told us: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" And I must say, the arrival of the archbishop did come as a surprise.
He was introduced into the discussion by Sir Peter Tapsell, one of the few members of parliament who realises that history didn't begin in 2010 and that economics doesn't stop at Dover. He rose to approving (if slightly ironic) cries of "yurr, yurr" from all sides.
In what was a courteous but direct attack on his own government, he asked if Danny Alexander, deputising for Osborne, had noted that "while the finance ministers seemed remarkably cheerful meeting in Aylesbury last weekend, the archbishop of Toledo was warning that their fiscal policies were threatening to cause social breakdown, in the overthrow of democracy in Spain and much of southern Europe".
This translates as: "Stop this demented austerity and pump some money into the economy!" I do feel that Sir Peter, in league with the archbishop, could have made his point more effectively with the use of garrucha (hanging upside down from the ceiling, like Dan Brown trying to get over writer's block), toca (an early form of waterboarding) and the potro (the rack).
To be fair to the Inquisition, they only used confessions extracted after the torture had ended, which let them claim that admissions had been freely given; the fact that the torture would have started again if they hadn't confessed was a minor detail. However, that choice is not available to us: we get the torture, and are obliged to admit that it's all our fault.
Michael Palin also threatened to "make the torture worse by shouting a lot", a role that fell to Sajid Javid, a Treasury understrapper who bellows a very great deal. It makes your ears sing in the press gallery. Facing him across the dispatch box must be like having Sir Alex Ferguson give you the hairdryer treatment at a range of two inches.
