The Speaker’s ruling on Rachel Reeves today was a friendly gesture to the Labour front bench.

Bercow said that while Government Ministers were under an obligation not to mislead the Commons, the Opposition wasn’t so constrained. It was up to them, individually to take responsibility for what they say in Parliament. It wasn’t, however, a matter of “order”.

It’s not what Erskine May says.

Under the heading “Members deliberately misleading the House” the good book says: “The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as a contempt.”

That sounds like a matter of order.

And had one of the Speaker’s betes noires in the last Parliament lied like a flat fish to the House, you can bet he would have descended on them like a collapsing house.