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Let's face it, most jokes made in the House of Commons are not funny. Backbenchers generally laugh either out of a sense of tribalism or second-hand embarrassment. This makes William Hague's 2008 speech in a debate on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty (stay with me) an outlier, in that it was genuinely, bone-splittingly, do-not-watch-in-public-for-fear-of-emitting-loud-snorts, funny. See what I mean.
The section I will quote is, naturally, on Tony Blair. Standing at the dispatch box, flanked by David Cameron and George Osborne and opposite David Miliband, all of whom were in stitches, Hague noted dryly the former prime minister's apparent attempt to be appointed EU president.
"I must warn ministers opposite that having tangled with Tony Blair across this dispatch box on literally hundreds of occasions, I know his mind almost as well as they do. I can tell them that when he goes off to a major political conference of a centre-right party and simultaneously refers to himself as a socialist, he is on manoeuvres, and is busily building coalitions as only he can.
Speaking of which, what was that nice man of the left, Keir Starmer, doing today with Giorgia Meloni, who not long ago was considered Italy's first far-right leader since Benito Mussolini? Indeed, sufficient eyebrows were raised when Rishi Sunak forged a close working relationship with Meloni.
The answer is, of course, the issue of illegal migration. As political editor Nicholas Cecil reports, Starmer hailed Italy's "dramatic" reduction in migrants risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean, stating: "I want to understand how that came about."
There is particular interest in the deal, yet to go into effect, that Italy has signed with Albania, whereby migrants' claims are to be processed offshore. Hang on, isn't that a lot like the Rwanda scheme that Starmer so forcefully opposed? Actually, it's "very different" according to Yvette Cooper. So that's dealt with, then.
These rhetorical gymnastics follow another deadly week in the Channel. On Sunday, French authorities confirmed that eight people had drowned after trying to cross. This brings the death toll in attempted crossings to 46 since the start of the year.
The political problem for the previous Conservative government was not simply the numbers arriving by small boat, which were not large in the context of total migration. Rather, it was the fact that Sunak ramped up the salience of the issue and then spectacularly failed to deliver on any of it. Labour is surely aware of this, given it was the principal political beneficiary. The question is, of course, whether the party has learned from it.
Starmer clearly thinks the UK can learn from Italy's experience. But there is a question around the similarities. As the barrister and author Colin Yeo points out, the issue in the channel is quite different to that in the Mediterranean, both in terms of numbers (far, far greater in the latter) and returns. Specifically, Albania is geographically close to Italy, which makes the idea that boats be physically towed to the country at least plausible. That is not the case for the UK.
Starmer understandably wants to appear tough on illegal migration. Still, the real lesson to be learned is not necessarily from Meloni but from her erstwhile political buddy, Sunak. Like his predecessor, Starmer must try to address the crisis, both for political and moral reasons. A good place to start would be to avoid raising expectations of deals with faraway-sounding-countries without a credible plan to make it work.
