Jeremy Corbyn's lips moved just a fraction and a silent earthquake brought down the House of Commons

Did he say 'stupid woman'? Did he say 'stupid people'? At our moment of national crisis, this is the question that will shape history

His lips part, just half an inch or so, that’s not in doubt. The upper lip becomes protuberant. The tongue flashes into the rough crevice behind his front teeth. Then, lips touch again, and from there comes the question that will shape history.

Does the leader of the opposition’s orbicularis oris contract sufficiently to draw the incisivus labii superioris forward into a puckering shape that necessitates the “wuh” sound? Both the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and Sam Seaborn from The West Wing think it does.

Or do the nasolabialis and the incisivus labii inferioris contract to form the narrow corridor from which the “puh” sound can be expelled?

That’s what Corbynite blogger Aaron Bastani thinks, and he’s slowed the footage down to ¼ speed.

He thinks Evelyn Glennie and the guy from The West Wing are “mindless”.

Perhaps we will never know the answer, but what we do know is that it set forth arguably the most wondrous hour in British Political History, not least as Brexit didn’t get a mention. This was just a simple, heartwarming tale of Jeremy Corbyn allegedly calling Theresa May a stupid woman and everyone going quite, quite mad.

Theresa May had just got to the end of a joke only fractionally less laboured in its construction than the Great Pyramid of Giza when the incident happened. “It’s Christmas season, I mean it’s panto season,” she’d said. “Is he going to bring a motion of no confidence? Oh yes he is! Oh no he isn’t?”

Then she sat down, but, unbeknownst to anyone, a silent earthquake had been set off. Jeremy Corbyn had appeared to mouth the words “stupid woman” to himself. (His spokespeople and his social media fanboys would later claim he said “stupid people”. The video evidence is inconclusive, which is helpful to anyone determined not to form a conclusion.)

No one in the House of Commons realised at first, but footage made its way on to social media. Murmurs flew round the chamber. Videos were watched on phones placed on neighbours’ knees.

Corbyn himself would be shown Dawn Butler’s phone, as she scrolled through Twitter. The incident could not possibly have escaped them.

And then, at the very end, somewhere in the region of eight or nine hundred Tory MPs sought to make points of order, and no one could be in any doubt what for.

John Bercow, the speaker, dismissed them. “Points of order come after statements,” he said. Which indeed they do, but it would mean this imminent barrage of howling demands for Mr Corbyn to apologise would have to wait for several hours, and frankly this would not do.

The speaker does not sit on his phone during Prime Minister’s Questions – the only person on Earth who does not – so it seems possible he had no idea what the fuss was about.

But he would soon know. Patrick McLoughlin, the former Tory party chairman, screamed, “Point of Order! Point of Order!” at the speaker’s chair with the full rage of a man bumped off the last Ryanair flight out of Raqqa.

Indeed, so captivating was his anger, that few noticed the Labour leader darting to the exit, absenting himself from the wild scenes that would follow.

Mr Bercow succumbed in the end, to what would become a full 30 minutes of ever increasing demands for an apology, right in the middle of which came a moment that will never be forgotten by anyone who saw it.

Perhaps when Mr Bercow agreed to hear a point from Andrea Leadsom he should have known what was coming. In May of this year, he was accused of applying this very term, “stupid woman”, to Ms Leadsom, as he muttered something to one of his clerks at the end of Prime Minister’s Questions. Since that time, Ms Leadsom, who is the leader of the House, has consistently refused to look Mr Bercow in the eye, even when she delivers her weekly business statement that lasts over an hour.

This time, she angled her body to the left, stared directly at him, and almost appeared to purr, the first sign that a strike was imminent. “I would just like to ask,” she said, with an almost eerie calm, “after your finding there, that individuals who are found to have made unwelcome remarks should apologise, why it is that when an opposition party member found that you had called me a stupid woman you did not apologise in this chamber?”

Next to Ms Leadsom on the front bench, the prime minister’s eyes widened as if she had sat suddenly upon an epipen. Up on his great green throne, the speaker’s world collapsed from under him.

Mr Bercow has a well established taste in loud ties. Never before have they been so singularly outshone by his face. It turned first to pink, then to crimson, then to puce, like a sunset in a nuclear winter.

“I have no need... the honourable lady... four months ago... nothing further on the matter…” This is the verbatim quote, not least as, presumably through sheer embarrassment, his microphone broke too, leaving his desperate prevarications inaudible. That actually happened.

It was a revenge served at a temperature that can only be measured on the Kelvin scale. It was, frankly, immaculate.

Then we were back to the demands made by angry Tory MPs that Mr Bercow demand Mr Corbyn apologise. But Mr Bercow hadn’t seen the footage, so could hardly do so. By my count, four Tory backbenchers made genuinely unironic references to the need for a “video referee”.

In the members gallery, in the very seat where Philip May was sitting last week, to support his wife in what might have been her last day as prime minister, the official commons photographer was making a rare appearance at PMQs, pointing her lens towards the baffled wonderment of it all.

And already pictures have emerged. Of John Bercow looking the other way, as Jo Churchill, the member for Bury St Edmunds, shoves her phone under his nose with the footage playing. Matt Hancock, the actual health secretary is screaming in his face. These are scenes frankly indistinguishable from those which the footballing authorities had to take steps to outlaw when Chelsea players infamously surrounded the referee during an unforgettably hostile encounter with Paris Saint-Germain a few seasons ago.

Meanwhile, a producer on a radio show was showing the footage to the deaf percussionist and accomplished lip reader Evelyn Glennie, and informing the world she definitely thinks he said “stupid woman”. On Twitter, Rob Lowe of The West Wing was having his say.

It was, frankly, madness. But the kind of wondrous madness, in a perverse way, that could almost restore one’s faith in politics. In the traditional huddle outside, a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn said he had “nothing to apologise for” as he’d said “stupid people”, not “stupid woman”, before adding the immortal words: “Anyone interested in the crisis facing the country?”

To which the honest answer, I’m afraid, is no. We’ve had enough of the crisis facing the country. It’s all we’ve talked about for months and, as we all know, nothing has changed. It’s Christmas next week, and if you were there for this, it’s definitely going to be a let-down.