At PMQs, Jeremy Corbyn asked when austerity would end – and Theresa May couldn't answer

Corbyn didn’t say how much more ought to be spent, or how it should be paid for – but May was so feeble in response that, for the purposes of Punch and Judy politics, it was six-nil to Labour

Jeremy Corbyn was being a “serious person for serious times” at Prime Minister’s Questions today. This meant more of his exasperated teacher act. At one point he paused to repeat himself, “In the last year …”, because the class was making too much noise.

This helps make it look as if Conservative MPs don’t take questions about police and schools funding seriously, and so that was a point to Labour. Theresa May had tried to bring some sunshine to a gloomy nation in her party conference in Birmingham last week by announcing the end of austerity.

So Corbyn took her through six areas of public spending to ask if austerity really was over. Her answers were formulaic and evasive. Her government has just been told off by the statistics watchdog for making misleading claims about schools spending and yet she repeated some of them today. “Funding for schools is at a record high.” But not funding per pupil, as pupil numbers are going up too. “Per pupil funding is protected in real terms.” In other words, having gone down it is now unchanged. This is not what most people call the end of austerity.

These were serious exchanges. It wasn’t exactly the end of Punch and Judy politics. Austerity is over, she said. Oh no it isn’t, he said. He was more right than she was, and a democratic service of some kind was performed.

Corbyn didn’t say how much more ought to be spent on mental health care, policing, teachers, local councils and universal credit, or how it should be paid for – apart from a typically wild swipe at “tax giveaways for big corporations and the super rich” – but May was so feeble in response that, for the purposes of Punch and Judy politics, it was six-nil to Labour. Mind you, that score might look a bit different after the Budget in three weeks’ time, when the government may be able to claim its spending plans are slightly less austere.

Important though all this was, it was a dull, low-wattage session. The chamber was nowhere near full, and both sides were mostly quiet, if not silent. But the real reason for the subdued mood was that the focus was elsewhere. The prime minister, most of her government and much of the shadow cabinet are all obsessed with the coming crunch point in the Brexit talks.

And, apart from a question about fish from a Liberal Democrat, no one asked about Brexit – until about halfway through when Kenneth Clarke was called to speak. He asked the only question that the House was really interested in, which was to ask the prime minister if she realised that pro-European Conservative MPs and a significant number of Labour MPs would provide her with the majority she needs to get the withdrawal deal through parliament. Clarke urged her to ignore opposition from the “Bennites on the Labour front bench” and “right-wing nationalists in our party”, and to throw herself on the mercy of the unspoken centre party in the Commons.

This prompted May’s most interesting answer of the session, as she urged “everyone in this House” to “put the national interest first”. She will need Labour votes to get her Brexit deal through, and that is the only thing that matters in the next few weeks.

After Brexit, we can get back to arguing about tax and spending and whether austerity has ended. But those are not questions for today.