It had started so well. With Emily Thornberry and David Mellor having cancelled each other out with spectacular own goals, David Cameron and Ed Miliband had sensibly steered clear of white vans and taxis at prime minister’s questions. Instead the Labour leader had returned to the NHS and his exchanges with the prime minister had been rather more grown up than of late. Though just as sterile, since Cameron still refused to fully engage with any question.

The prime minister couldn’t avoid taking a small hit over the publication of a report that concluded care home provision for people with learning disabilities had actually got worse since abuse at Winterbourne View had been exposed three years ago, though he did his best to turn it into a personal triumph.

“The reason why we commissioned this excellent report,” he said, “is that the commitment to get all the people out of the hospitals had not been met.” He seemed unaware this was something his government had said it would fix.

Cameron also resisted the opportunity to blame his own health minister for increasing the number of people presenting at A&E last week from 428,999 to 429,000 and inadvertently allowed the word “mistake” to creep into one of his sentences. Having realised the only mistake he had actually made was to mention the word mistake, he corrected himself by linking the benefits of a creaking health service to a strong economy. Dialectics used to be Labour policy.

But then, consistency has never been the strongest of Conservative traits in this government. Ten minutes is just about all the Tory backbenchers can take of listening to their leader talking at cross-purposes about policy and they weren’t going to pass up the chance to show their love for the white van. With either a brilliant sense of irony or total amnesia, it was Nadhim Zahawi, the millionaire who charged the taxpayer £5,000 for the heating costs of his riding stables, who was first up to express the deepness of his white van man-love.

“When I see a white van, I think of the small business owner who works long hours to put food on the family table,” he said. “When I see the cross of St George, I think of the words of my constituent, William Shakespeare: ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’” It took Zahawi several goes to get this out right, so he might have some shame after all. Albeit sub-consciously. Sic Ford Transit, gloria mundi.

Cameron’s love for the white van was even deeper. He had installed a white van as the centrepiece of the Downing Street nativity display and he hoped that the rest of the country would follow his example; Miliband looked down, his respect for the white van more of a transcendent, meditational devotion. Labour backbencher Jamie Reed couldn’t remain so silent. “The first thing I think of when I see a white van,” he said, “is whether or not my father or my brother is driving it.” Cameron eyed him warily, before remembering that Ocado vans are green and purple and that he had no reason to be polite.

Those not called by the speaker to over-emote their whitevanphilia, found other ways to make their hysteria known. Sir Bob Russell ostentatiously paraded a union jack waist-coat that made him look like a pantomime extra. With the Lib Dems having polled under 1% in Rochester, that might not be such a bad career move.