Today’s PMQs marked a return to old form for Jeremy Corbyn. After two reasonably successful bouts against the Prime Minister, the Labour leader appeared to struggle as he failed to land any knockout blows.
Corbyn focussed on the NHS, beginning with mental health. While he claimed the NHS has gone into its worse crisis in its history, May managed to bat off his concerns fairly easily — even if he did expose some vulnerability in the government’s record. On funding, she simply pointed out that the Conservatives were giving the NHS more than it had originally asked for — something Ed Miliband had refused to guarantee at the general election. On cuts, the Prime Minister explained that the only party cutting NHS spending was Labour in Wales.
Despite Corbyn’s lacklustre effort, it wasn’t all smooth-sailing for May. She faced tough questions from the SNP’s Angus Robertson over arms sales to Saudi Arabia. However, the question that made May squirm came from Labour’s Lisa Nandy. She asked about the blunder-ridden child sexual abuse inquiry, which is now onto its fourth chair after Dame Lowell Goddard quit as chair amid allegations of racism:
‘She set up the inquiry, she appointed the chair, she was the individual responsible for the inquiry’s success, she was the home secretary in April and she was the only person who had the power to act. Can she now finally tell us when she personally learnt of the serious problems developing in this inquiry and why it was she took no action at all?’
May’s response was weak. She appeared to admit that she’d heard concerns before the formal complaint but had failed to act as ‘the home secretary cannot intervene on the basis of suspicion, rumour or hearsay’. Of course, a leader of a department — or a country — should be able to know when to investigate things further. On the topic of leadership, Nandy’s impressive performance shows why she is widely tipped as a potential successor to Corbyn; today it was Nandy who provided the real opposition for Labour.
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