Jeremy Corbyn had a picnic basket full of choices with which to embarrass the Government this week.
He could have teased the Prime Minister over Ruth Davidson’s jibe that her party was seen as too dour and too joyless .
He could have ridiculed Boris Johnson for his jumbo-sized ambition for a private jet .
And he could have raised the never-ending disarray within the Cabinet over Brexit.
The Labour leader spurned this rich banquet in favour of a series of questions about the NHS.
If you felt the exchanges sounded familiar that was because, more or less, Mr Corbyn asked similar questions before and Theresa May has definitely given the same (non) answers.
The Labour leader started well by asking the Prime Minister to reveal the increase in spending on private health contractors.
Mrs May’s answer to this and the following five questions were boringly predictable.
This was PMQs by paint-by-numbers.
There was no artistry, no attempt to engage and almost no interest in elaborating on an issue that affects so many people’s lives.
These are the Prime Minister’s stock responses to any question on the NHS and she used all of them today:
1 Privatisation also happened under the last Labour government.
2 However bad the situation in England is, it is always worse in Labour-run Wales.
3 Andy Burnham once said something when shadow Health Secretary which is somehow still pertinent today.
4 It doesn’t matter what Labour says on the NHS as they would bankrupt the country.
It is perhaps to Corbyn’s credit that he continued to ask his questions at what was basically a brick wall.
The Labour leader never discomforted the Prime Minister but he managed to weave in an effective soundbite about the NHS becoming a “jackpot for privateers”.
His raising of the pay-off to Virgin Healthcare in Surrey will also resonate with many voters.
And he delivered his final question with real indignation.
There were, he raged, falling numbers of doctors, falling numbers of nurses and the longest funding squeeze in the history of the NHS.
Nobody expected a direct response from Mrs May any she kindly lived down to expectations by not providing one.
Instead we got a diatribe about how Labour would raise taxes and increase debts.
This could prove a hostage to fortune given the NHS is in urgent need of extra money which will inevitably require some increase in taxation.