Leaves on the line? A pang of guilt for having flown back from Cop26 in a private jet to get back in time for dinner with Charles Moore at the Garrick Club? A longstanding visit to a hospital that had been in the diary since at least nine o’clock that morning? A three-hour search for the mask he had forgotten to bring with him to the hospital? Whatever the reason, Boris Johnson was conveniently out of town for the three-hour debate on parliamentary standards that the Speaker had granted at the end of the previous week. Under normal circumstances, it would have been Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the house, who deputised for the disappearing Boris. After all, it was house business, and Rees-Mogg was sitting on the government frontbenches, primed and pumped. Only Jakey appears to have been silenced. Presumably for his part in the government’s embarrassing mishandling of Owen Paterson’s suspension for multiple breaches of the paid lobbying rules. Or possibly for his own good. He’s not quite the uber parliamentarian he thinks he is. Anyway, Rees-Mogg did not look at all happy to have been sidelined. His face was flushed and he had the air of an overgrown schoolboy who had been caught red-handed breaking the rules. It’s just that he is too arrogant to feel shame and humiliation, so his first resort is anger. So it was left to Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, to take the flak. And you could see why. Because no member of the cabinet is quite so dull and forgettable. There are mornings when even his reflection doesn’t recognise him. Barclay is the go-to man for when the going gets tough – it’s why he was appointed Brexit secretary at a time when the government appeared to not have a clue what it was doing – because he’s entirely believable when he just smiles nicely and totally misses the point. It also helps that he’s so obviously not that bright, yet extremely polite with it. So attacking him for his limitations just feels like a cruel bloodsport. Barclay took plenty of interventions from both sides of the house, yet admirably stuck to his brief. Which was to say as little as possible other than to say a quick sorry for any mistakes that may have been made last week and to reassure everyone that he was listening. What to wasn’t entirely clear. Would he apologise for the prime minister’s absence? No, because that would interrupt his listening. Could he explain why Rees-Mogg wasn’t leading the debate? Yes, because if he was then it would be someone else who was listening. Would the government accept the offer of a quick vote the following day to get rid of the sham committee it had whipped its MPs for and to approve the original committee’s findings that were now in parliamentary suspended animation? A bit like Barclay himself. No, because he could only do one thing at a time and right now he was devoted to listening. Should MPs have more than one job? Yes, providing it didn’t involve any extra listening. The session had started with a statement from the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, making clear the previous week had not been the Commons’ finest hour and that he hoped the forthcoming debate would be conducted in a non-partisan manner. That lasted less than five minutes into the opening speech of Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem MP who had been granted the debate, as Labour’s Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi’s intervened to declare that Johnson had acted as a tinpot dictator. Hoyle sighed and cut him short. There was no need to be so harsh on tinpot dictators. Even so, it was hard to escape Johnson’s charge sheet. Chamberlain made good inroads, accusing Boris of never accepting that the rules applied to him and his party, and of having form for making himself unavailable to parliament when there was a reckoning to be paid. But the case became utterly damning when Keir Starmer got into his stride. The leader of the opposition was clearly keen to make up for the lost time when he had been at home with Covid and went the whole hog. The only way to describe Johnson’s government was “totally corrupt”. Hoyle let this one go. There was only so far he was prepared to go in pursuit of balance. The Paterson case was symptomatic of wider wrongdoing in the Tory government, Starmer observed. A good prime minister would have told Paterson to accept the punishment but instead he had tried to change the rules and got his ministers to trash the reputation of the commissioner for standards. Johnson encouraged a cynicism that devalued everything, he continued. Then there was the matter of the £3m “cash for a peerage” scandal. Rees-Mogg looked horrified. He had no idea the asking price was so cheap. Starmer concluded with three demands. That Tory sex pest MP face a recall petition. That Paterson shouldn’t be eligible for a peerage. And that there should be a proper investigation into how Randox won Covid contracts when Paterson sat in on the call with the minister involved. “The joke’s not funny any more,” he ended. To be fair, it hasn’t been funny for a while. There were fewer than 50 Tory MPs who had bothered to turn up for the debate – and most of them were ones who had defied Johnson’s three-line whip. The others must have been too ashamed to attend. Or perhaps they just don’t see what the problem with breaking the rules is. The only Conservative to defend Paterson was Bill Cash, a man with the unfailing knack of always missing the point. He’s like an old soldier who doesn’t know the war ended years ago. Conservative Mark Harper went so far as to say that Bertie Booster should come to the Commons in person to apologise. At which point, Kevin Brennan pointed out that the prime minister’s train had got in at 5pm so there was still plenty of time for him to make an appearance. But that was never going to happen. Even a token apology would suggest a vestigial trace of guilt. And Boris doesn’t even have that. He’s amoral to his core. A Farewell to Calm by John Crace is published by Guardian Faber, price £9.99. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.