Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Corbyn’s comic timing is more Karl Marx than Groucho

He’s making the most of it before he gets the push. The Speaker chaired one of the longest-ever sessions of PMQs today. It lasted nearly an hour. He opened proceedings with a ceremonial speech welcoming a handful of visitors to the chamber. They thought they’d come to watch parliament but Bercow knew better. They were there to see him. He greeted each of his guests by name and then turned towards the public gallery, his right arm sweeping upwards in a gesture of munificent benediction. Caesar offering peace-terms to the humbled tribes of Gaul could scarcely have looked nobler.

Jeremy Corbyn seized on the latest Brexit wounds. He asked the PM what she’d meant by ‘as little friction as possible’.

‘Was she talking about the EU trade negotiations or the next cabinet meeting?’

Good joke. Just one problem. It was written by somebody else. Corbyn follows Marx in many of his guises but he’s no Groucho. The Tories had more fun laughing at this contrived quip than the Labour ranks.

Maggie Throup accused her local Police and Crime Commissioner of wasting £90,000 on two extra civilian staff. She said the pen-pushers now outnumber the beat-officers in Erewash. The problem is the unhappy phrase, ‘crime commissioner’. It sounds like an official obliged to invent crime not to eliminate it. But with the proliferation of Facebook felonies, this is exactly what the cops seem to be up to. The PCCs only exist to enable governments to dodge the blame and send it ricocheting back to the local authorities.

The same with health. Anne-Marie Trevelyan asked the PM for extra ‘palliative and convalescent care’ in her constituency.

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