So how does Tony manage it? Well, it's all in the wrist action

So farewell then. It's all over. Now we won't be able to ask ourselves those useless afternoon questions like: has Hazel Blears got a more annoying voice than Sally Keeble? Will Gordon Brown find a hair conditioner that both holds and shines? When John Prescott sucks his stomach in, does the fat go into his brain cavity? Is this a ministerial statement by David Blunkett or has my tinnitus just got worse? Will Geoff Hoon use first-strike nuclear weapons against Iraq as he's hinted and thereby cause a radioactive meltdown in the Middle East? The Prime Minister revealed yesterday what he has behind his crumple zone.

His forward parts, as the Sketch has noted before, have been modelled on the safety features of Japanese cars. Mr Blair absorbs the energy of the impact with a variety of apologetic crash absorbers. It's true things aren't ideal, he says; yes, people are unhappy, there is more to be done, people do want improvements, it's true what's being said that some things have gone the wrong way – but that is precisely why. Precisely why what? Oh, you know.

More doctors. More nurses. More policemen. More extra "investment".

"Crumple zone" shows us how he engages with the question, how he takes issues head on, what a straight kind of guy he is, in his own corkscrew phrase. But yesterday he showed us an even more effective rhetorical device than "crumple zone". It's "magic hands". He waves the hands in front of the criticism – and lo, it disappears, at least to his own eyes.

Iain Thing got him bang to rights on two issues – national preparedness for a terror attack (we're not) and the difficulty of expelling violent pupils.

The Prime Minister just waved his magic hands, and all was well.

The Labour majority on the defence committee had charged the Government with, essentially, running round like headless chickens, wasting time and money and confusing activity with achievement in the preparations against a local 9/11.

Mr Blair used his magic hands and said: "He says it's not happening. It is happening." He meant everything was going to be allright when the fuel-heavy planes fly through the roof of the House of Commons. I didn't believe him.

On expulsions (I won't say "exclusions") Mr Thing noted that the Government had drastically reduced the powers of headteachers to get rid of violent pupils. Expelled pupils appealed, each appeal cost £10,000 and a third of appeals went against the school.

"Heads, of course, have the power to exclude pupils. Of course they do. And that happens. And we support them." Eight out of 10 heads say they've been physically threatened. One third have dealt with offensive weapons. Mr Thing begged Mr Blair to see the connection between undermined authority and these examples of violence.

The magic hands passed over the Commons: "I don't accept they have been undermined," the Prime Minister said.

Mind you, in connection with Northern Ireland he also said: "No level of violence will be tolerated." What he meant by that was impossible to say.

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