It’s been quite a six months for Boris Johnson. In rough chronological order – the prime minister’s timelines have always had a tendency to get messy – he has won a general election, taken the UK out of the EU, acquired a dog, finalised a divorce, got engaged to Carrie Symonds, announced they were expecting a baby together, taken 10 days’ holiday during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, been admitted to the intensive care unit at St Thomas’ with Covid-19 and become a father again. Just how many children Boris now has is anyone’s guess. Fair to say that the arrival of the latest baby boy caught everyone on the hop, as the official due date had been given as early summer less than a couple of months ago. Even Downing Street seemed wrongfooted by the news, having spent most of Tuesday afternoon and half of Wednesday morning refusing to say whether Boris was sufficiently recovered from his illness to take prime minister’s questions. A straightforward, “Carrie’s having the baby” would have been more than enough for most hacks. As it was, the birth took place amid levels of secrecy not even granted to the royal family. Just a short announcement that the mother and baby were both healthy and that Boris had been present throughout the birth. However, paternity leave may have to be put on hold indefinitely while the government tries to make a better fist of dealing with the pandemic than it has so far. So, after the obligatory expressions of good wishes towards Boris and Carrie, PMQs turned into a re-run of last week’s encounter between the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, and the stand-in prime minister, Dominic Raab. With much the same result as last time. As you would expect when a top QC finds himself up against a rather out-of-his-depth country conveyancing solicitor. Starmer doesn’t just beat his opponents with his forensic intelligence – it’s always helpful to have a party leader who can hold more than one thought in his head at any one time – but with politeness. The nicer he is being to you, the more trouble you know you are in. Even a shouty, ranty Keir might have been difficult for Raab to see off, given the government’s record on handling the coronavirus. But against a Keir who is the epitome of icy calm with the total mastery of his brief, he had no chance. First up, Dom was asked to explain Boris’s use of the phrase “our apparent success” in his return to Downing Street statement on Monday. Our mortality rates had already cruised past the chief scientific adviser’s hoped-for maximum of 20,000 deaths and the UK was still in lockdown from the first wave of the disease. By what criteria could that be judged an apparent success? A bead of sweat formed on Raab’s forehead. It was bad enough having to deal with his own fuck-ups, let alone those made by his boss. So he just mumbled something about how things could have been worse – hell, we could all have died – and then made the classic error of insisting it was far too early to make international comparisons. If the UK had the death rates per head of population of Germany and South Korea we would be shouting about it from the rooftops on a daily basis. And rightly so. From there on, Dom was firmly on the back foot as time and again Keir killed him with kindness. Starmer so, so wanted to be supportive in a time of crisis but he was just struggling with one or two little things. Like why the differential between testing capacity and demand, when there so clearly was excess demand. No, he wasn’t trying to score political points, he was merely echoing the concerns of the head of the Royal College of Physicians. And while he had Raab’s attention, could he just follow the lead of almost every other country and give a hint – a little hintlet even – of what the government’s exit strategy might be? Dom couldn’t. This was all well above his pay grade. He shouldn’t be carrying the can for all this. Next time Boris had a child someone else could take over. Things didn’t much improve when the SNP’s Ian Blackford wondered why the Conservatives were so dead set on leaving the EU at the end of the year at a time when the economy might have tanked completely? Even Raab could see it was a completely ludicrous idea and his face crumpled. Normally at times of stress, Dom merely goes full, mainlined-steroids psycho. Determined to out-macho and out-anger his opponents. Now there was something almost childlike about him as his carapace cracked. His vulnerability was almost painful to watch. He had done his best, but it hadn’t been nearly good enough. He was the little boy, out of his depth, who just wanted his Daddy. It was just unfortunate that his Daddy was off with his latest son. His only light relief was two questions about garden centres. Who knew the National Union for Garden Centres was so well represented on the Tory benches?