Simon Hoggart: Pugnacious Ed Balls gets tough with the chancellor as he prepares for this week's budget speech
There's a famous cartoon that appeared in Punch about 150 years ago. It shows a mining village. A couple of miners are glaring at an elegant toff who has somehow wandered in, clad in a top hat and bow tie, carrying a cane at an elegant angle.
First polite native: "Who's 'im, Bill?"
Second ditto: "A stranger!"
First ditto: "Eave 'arf a brick at 'im."
I was put in mind of this at Treasury questions when the toff, George Osborne, faced the aggressive local, Ed Balls. So far, the chancellor had had a fairly smooth ride.
Sir Peter Tapsell had made one of his stupendous interventions, calling for "the complete sepawation" (Sir Peter has a slight speech impediment) of commercial and investment banks. But for once Sir Peter was onside, in a way.
Now and again Mr Balls showed signs of behaving like one of the natives quoted above, raising his right arm and tugging it up and down, which I took to illustrate someone pulling an old-fashioned toilet chain, of the sort that would have been found outdoors in the village depicted.
Finally it was his turn, and his chance to heave a brick. He had, he said, acquired a document which the chancellor proposed to publish alongside the budget. "I read it last night, but the chancellor has no need to worry. I won't be showing it to the press – frankly, there is nothing worth leaking." Except, he added, an attack on paternity rights and enterprise zones.
The toff languidly replied that he wasn't sure it was the real document – he couldn't recall anything about paternity rights. Mr Balls found the other half of his brick and lobbed over a quote from Vince Cable, who seemed to be in disagreement with the government's whole policy.
Then we heard from the ultimate toff, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who wears a phantom top hat at all times. He uncoiled himself to support, in tones that would have seemed strangulated in Downton Abbey, every aspect of the Osborne recipe.
He is the Dennis Skinner of the Conservative party, there to assure us that the class war is ready to flare up again at any moment. The two red lines down the chamber have nothing to do with being a sword's length apart – it's to prevent brick-heaving.
An oddity: Ian Paisley Jr rose to ask about, of all things, VAT on toasted sandwiches. For those of us who recall his father's glory days, it was something of a letdown.
"Let me smell your breath!" he would roar, never adding, "aha, cheese and onion on Kingsmill! The devil's ambrosia!" And you'll never see an armed mob protesting about increased duty on lunchtime snacks, even in Belfast.
Finally, fashion notes: Sir Gerald Kaufman arrived in a shimmering light grey suit with a feint square pattern, a shirt striped in purple and mauve, the whole topped with a check tie in sky blue, navy and orange.
I have now worked out where Sir Gerald's tailor gets his material – everything he wears is recycled from gorgeous saris.