Jeremy Corbyn may have misgivings about shoot to kill, but few of his own MPs seem to share them. Sitting next to the leader of the opposition for the prime minister’s statement on the G20 summit and the Paris attacks was Hilary Benn. The normally mild-mannered shadow foreign secretary gave every impression he was trying to eliminate his boss with mind control and a rictus smile. Disappointed to find Jezza still breathing, he left without saying goodbye after 45 minutes.

Other Labour MPs chose to kill their leader by vocalising their whole-hearted support for the prime minister’s tougher stance on terrorism. One by one they rose. Pat McFadden. Mike Gapes. David Hanson. Chris Leslie. Emma Reynolds. Chuka Umunna. Anne Coffey. Ian Leslie. Even the usually on-message Sarah Champion. Et tu, Sarah? There would have been more, had not the Speaker curtailed the debate. Not even in Iain Duncan Smith’s darkest hours had a leader been turned on so openly by his own party in parliament.

Gravitas isn’t something that comes easily to David Cameron but, just this once, he was allowed the chance to feel what it might be like to be a statesman. A father not just to the Conservatives but also to a Labour party keen to distance itself from a leader whose pacifism has failed to capture the public mood. A father to the nation.

Having begun the session in low-key deferential fashion, promising to take due note of the foreign affairs select committee’s concerns before embarking on military action in Syria, the prime minister was almost in the mood to start the bombing immediately by the end. Such was the universal hawkish acclaim he was receiving. “We’ve got better weapons than the US,” he boasted. “We’ve got the Brimstone missile that can take out jihadis just like that.”

For Corbyn, it was more a case of sinking to the occasion. In recent exchanges with the prime minister, the Labour leader has more than held his own but now he was hesitant, stumbling over his speech long before many of the poisoned arrows had struck him. “Um ... er,” he said, coughing nervously and regularly losing his place and train of thought.

What would successful military action look like? Is bombing a country into rubble the best way of building a new democracy? These important questions went almost unheard. After his remarks to the BBC on Monday, Jezza is finding it hard to shake the impression that he is the kind of leader who would politely request a terrorist to sit down for a nice cup of tea and talk through his anger issues, even as he was reloading his AK-47 to gun down some more civilians having a quiet night out.

The onslaught took its toll. Minister after minister abandoned Corbyn on the frontbench until the only people left were Diane Abbott and a totally bewildered Barry Gardiner, a junior shadow minister for climate change. Having got up most of her colleagues’ noses by catching up with her correspondence at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party the night before, it was too early for Abbott to start on her Christmas cards. So she just stared stony-faced into the abyss. What she saw was too frightening even for her, so she too upped sticks. Though not before roping in a reluctant Jon Trickett to take her place.

Gardiner passed the time by ostentatiously tapping away at his iPad. A tip, Barry. Passive-aggression has never been a worthwhile tactic when playing Call of Duty. He nudged Corbyn to let him know the baddies had just killed him for the umpteenth time in a row before he had had a chance to save his game at the checkpoint. Jezza knew the feeling. Shoot to kill had just claimed its first parliamentary victim.