PMQs verdict: Thornberry triumphs as uneasy Mr Green turns into Mr Bean

“Oh, Emily Thornberry…” Could that be the chant one day sung over and over by Labour’s ranked mass of members? Don’t rule it out, based on today’s prime minister’s questions.

There is no vacancy, of course, but the shadow foreign secretary excelled when she took on Damian Green in the Commons today.

Theresa May was on a surprise trip to the Middle East, leaving the first secretary to serve as deputy to the interim prime minister, and Jeremy Corbyn to sit this one out.

Green was up against an on-form Thornberry, who joked and jibed around the cabinet minister before skewering him with some questions over the number of nurses.

Thornberry was the clear winner of a session which she kicked off with a few funnies, then dealt with the shadow of the St George’s flag that has hung over her since she was sacked from Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet, before launching into an acute interrogation of Green.

The expression of the stand-in PM veered between anxious and simply miserable. Thornberry began by asking Green whether he would be held by the same standards in government as he demanded in opposition. MPs sat up – wondering if this was a reference to the claim he viewed pornography on official computers, an allegation he denies – but Green was being led up the garden path.

The first secretary looks “perturbed”, taunted Thornberry, enjoying the moment of his unease, before adding “I am not going there… What percentage of new nurses recruited in the last 12 months are still working full-time?”

This was the same question Green had asked of John Prescott when he deputised for Tony Blair some 17 years ago.

Of course, Green had no memory of that and proceeded to ramble through some nursing numbers.

Thornberry, who – like Blair – was a barrister before entering the Commons kept pressing on the same subject, as anyone who knows how to grill a witness would do.

“Why are so many nurses leaving the profession they love?”, she asked.

Exactly. It was a question that would unite the fractured tribes of Labour.

Green, who rose with almost no trace to become the number two to his old Oxford University friend May, simply floundered.

He was promoted as a safe pair of hands but he couldn’t win a battle of the stats and his answers seemed to be forgotten as soon they were spoken.

Green’s best hope was his prepared attacks. When he rolled out the memory of the St George’s Cross – a tweet from the Rochester by-election campaign in 2014 which prompted Ed M to drop Thornberry as shadow attorney-general – it fell flat because his opponent had already dealt with it at the beginning of her questions.

There then followed a debate over what was happening to the local hospital in Green’s home county of Kent. It allowed the first secretary to salvage a bit of pride with a couple of more confident answers – but it was not enough.

Thornberry was the winner despite a stumble in her final intervention, when she attacked Green over the £3bn spending on Brexit preparation in the Budget which outstripped the extra funding for the NHS. And that’s before the winter crisis comes, she added.

One right-wing pundit suggested afterwards that Thornberry’s powerful performance would leave May rather worried, but Corbyn even more so. This is mischievous. The shadow foreign secretary may well be a candidate for Labour leader one day but some people forget that while she may not be a core Corbynista in her politics, she is a friend of Jeremy and his neighbour in Islington. She knows that if her rehabilitation from Rochester were to take her all the way to the top of the party then that would be because she is close to Jeremy, rather than his rival.

It is the Tories who should be concerned because Green’s effort today showed that even when you change the singer, the song stays the same. This is a rudderless government, broken by Brexit and without a credible domestic policy agenda to save it. For Labour, the session was confirmation that whenever Corbyn retires, Thornberry could be among those aiming to take centre-stage.