Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Theresa May are PMQs naturals. The jokes and the ad-libs that have become such a feature of the session don’t come easily to them. In recent weeks, Corbyn has started with a parish notice to try and win the chamber over. Today, he congratulated Labour MP Conor McGinn on the birth of his daughter. But the PM got the wrong end of the stick and congratulated Corbyn on the birth of his grandchild, cue much hilarity. But it was all very in-joke. In many ways, this was the most memorable moment of a distinctly unmemorable PMQs. Corbyn and May clashed over universal credit, but the exchange didn’t reveal anything we didn’t know already.
Perhaps, the most telling moment of the session came when Charles Walker asked about British Gymnastics suspending Louis Smith over allegedly mocking Islam. Walker pointed out that Christianity is frequently mocked without the same furore being created and argued that Smith had been abandoned in the face of death threats and the like. May gave a less than robust response, talking about the need to balance freedom of expression with tolerance. Revealingly, neither Walker nor May actually mentioned Islam in the exchange.
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