Did Jeremy Corbyn even have to give a big keynote speech? It all seems a bit old politics, even when shorn of the usual pumped-up pop music and soundbites. You sensed he might have preferred a nice march through Brighton and a rally on the beach.

By the time the sun had risen this morning Twitter had run out of pig jokes. Allegations that the British prime minister, David Cameron, “put a private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig while he was a student had broken the internet. #Piggate is trending. Stories about Cameron’s allegedly excessive drug-taking and general debauchery in his youth were even momentarily eclipsed. People who were trying to imagine Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister suddenly found their political imaginations diverted to far baser images.

After damaging rows over white poppies and anthems not sung, in the House of Commons today Jeremy Corbyn notched up a sorely needed success. His first prime minister’s questions looked like a daunting task at the start: the troops amassed behind their new general sat quietly terrified. But the moment he opened his mouth, Corbyn came across as a sober and puzzled outsider at the Westminster variety show. This harnessed the silence to his advantage, and – as such – put him on the side of a country which holds the Commons in contempt.

“I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” the Queen told Alice in Through the Looking-Glass. By lunchtime on Saturday that number would have been fast approaching double figures. The leftwing stalwart Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership election. His first act as leader would be to address a huge rally welcoming refugees.

Three months ago David Cameron celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Flanked by the Queen and the archbishop of Canterbury he genuflected before the pillars of Britain’s legal system.