WHAT a day! Tony Blair is used to having the political equivalent of a bad hair day but this was a fully fledged, never-been-seen-before Appallingly Bad Blair Day. For once, the Prime Minister was unable to come to his own rescue. In the Commons, at PMQs, he was woeful as he tried to explain why 1,023 foreign prisoners had not been deported. He prides himself in being at his best in a crisis but yesterday he was at his worst.

It really was a bit of a shock to see the PM like this. If he had been a boxer, he would have been staggering round, one eye the colour of aubergine, his knees wobbly as he reeled from rope to rope. As he is only a politician, he whimpered and whinged about how the Government is doing the best it can, really, given the circumstances. He then threw another punch at himself for, of course, this was his Government and his circumstances.

He must have known things were bad just by glancing at his own front bench as he scrambled past them to get to his place at PMQs. What a shambles they seemed, a grim little line of people that looked more like a police identity parade than a Cabinet. Charles Clarke has never looked so guilty, his arms and legs all tangled up around like one of those convoluted straws. His giant haystack body seemed to be shouting: “Get me out of here!” but, of course, it is not easy to escape if you are a haystack.

Others had gone to impressive extremes not to be there. We were sad that John Prescott’s place was empty (in the end it took two people to fill it). He was the talk of Westminster, of course, but we had seen rather too much of him and his private life (and that exuberant dancing and unbuttoned shirt) in the redtops that morning. No one would say where he was — for security reasons, obviously — but it was assumed the Deputy Prime Minister was getting hell in Hull. Gordon Brown was absent for entirely altruistic reasons. He was, as is so often the case these days when the PM needs him, saving the world. Yesterday this involved giving a press conference with Angelina (that’s Jolie, though she and Gordo are on first-name terms). They told the world of their love for each other and their love for all the people in the world and especially all the children in the world. Why they didn’t just sing Je T’aime and be done with it, I don’t know.

Mr Blair was also without Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, who was busy being booed by those ungrateful, overpaid nurses in Bournemouth. So there was no doubt that the Prime Minister was exposed and, for him, alone yesterday.

The setting was perfect for the Tories but they usually mess it up anyway. This time though, David Cameron shocked us all by being a grown-up politician. He pummelled the Prime Minister in a dispatch box exercise that required self-control and focus. As his queries grew sharper, Tory backbenchers roared out their support.

On the other side of the Chamber, Mr Blair’s protestations were greeted by his backbenchers with that most politically deadly of sounds — silence. He defended the indefensible fact that 1,023 foreign prisoners had been freed by saying that the system had been working properly since April 1. Does that make you feel any better?

He must have longed to have escaped by sacking someone. But that someone, of course, was the haystack. After PMQs, Mr Stack gave a statement on the fiasco. Mr Blair wasn’t there — he had already fled the Chamber like a bat out of hell.

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