The week the Commons came back...

There was a heady and unnerving buzz ringing in my head when leaving the Commons chamber after this week’s Budget statement.

Initially I suspected the halibut served up in the Press Gallery canteen may have been a little gammy.

But after consultation with others it emerged that something altogether more surprising had occurred – we had been invigorated by the Budget.

In the old days lobby journalists took bets on which MP would nod off first as Alistair Darling trudged through his colourless dialogue – usually one whom had recently partaken in a robust lunch.

I must admit missing watching the rotund Sir Patrick Cormack MP fighting to stay awake – his battle for sleep used to leave his head amusingly wobbling about like a balloon filled with water.

Indeed Darling’s prowess at being able to bore grown men into sleep was legendary and a powerful tool for hiding bad news when mixed with the opaque prose of Treasury documents.

Whatever your political views on George Osborne’s first budget statement, however, there was no getting round the fact that the event this week was devilishly exciting.

The Commons came alive in a fest of partisan politics – even the new MPs who’ve been loath to seem like the old bunch could not help but heckle.

Newbie MPs have been trying to show they’re not like the harrumphing, shouting members of pre-coalition politics but the heat of a passionate Budget debate broke them.

Despite the Deputy Speaker trying to calm the House down and saying that the public did not appreciate the noise, this was the Commons recapturing some of the drama which it lost towards the end of the last Parliament.