We are all betrayed by our body language eventually. It’s our inner quisling, itching to expose to the world the feelings our more sentient side would prefer to keep hidden. Yesterday it was Jess Phillips’s turn to be snitched on by her own mannerisms. The surliness with which she listened to MPs speak about the ‘grooming gang’ scandal was a true mask-off moment. Without words it told us all we need to know about this government.

Ms Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, came to the chamber to tell MPs that the government might not proceed with the five inquiries into ‘grooming gangs’ promised by the Home Secretary. Instead there’ll be a ‘more flexible’ approach, possibly including the setting up of victim-led local ‘panels’. It was a lot of words to say Labour is reneging on its pledge to dig for the truth of our nation’s decades-long treachery against white working-class girls.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, what came next was almost unbelievable. If Ms Phillips’s spoken words confirmed her government’s fundamental lack of interest in grappling with the ‘grooming gangs’ scourge, her noiseless irritation upon hearing other MPs speak candidly about those gangs exposed something darker. It spoke, silently, to the sniffy exasperation of a cut-off political class that can’t believe people are still droning on about this issue.

It was during Conservative MP Katie Lam’s intervention that Phillips’s quiet aggravation was writ largest. Ms Lam was superbly castigating. She slammed the government for its institutional insouciance on grooming gangs. She reminded the chamber what this sick scandal entailed. The girls who were subjected to such heinous assaults and exploitation were, she said, ‘predominantly white’, and their assaulters and exploiters ‘predominantly Muslim’.