Pmqs

There was astonishment at the start of PMQs as Michael Fabricant’s wig flew up into the air. Fortunately its owner was rising to speak at the same time so no embarrassment was suffered. John Bercow indulged the house in this last session before the election and let MPs give speeches rather than ask questions. The results were mixed. Was it classic Westminster-in-action? Or classic Westminster inaction? The exchanges lasted twice as long as normal and were less than half as informative. Theresa May crammed every sentence with Crosby buzz-phrases. ‘Strong economy’, ‘stable Conservative leadership’ she said about a zillion times. Her remote-controlled backbenchers followed suit. May’s willingness to repeat these

After Theresa May performed an election U-turn on Monday and called for a snap election, today’s PMQs saw competing parties draw out their battle lines for the weeks ahead. The SNP’s Angus Robertson criticised May for dodging the TV debates and she in turn told the SNP to get on with the day job. Nigel Evans jumped on speculation over how ‘liberal’ Tim Farron’s Christian beliefs are. The Conservative MP asked the leader of the Liberal Democrats if he thought homosexuality was a sin — something Farron went on to deny. While Conservatives were supportive of the Prime Minister’s decision to call a snap election, opposition MPs repeatedly accused May of being someone the public can

Tactics! At long last. Jeremy Corbyn actually used tactics at today’s PMQs. For the first time ever he divided his six questions into two three-ball overs. He spent the initial trio on last week’s terror attacks. Then, after an unsettling delay, he used three more on Mrs May’s fibs about school budgets. She says they’ve been ‘protected’. He says they’ve been ‘cut’. Protected. Cut. Cut. Protected. On it went. Mr Corbyn had a superb ally in the Public Accounts Committee which seems to support his view. The exchange might have been tricky for Mrs May but Mr Corbyn still can’t ram home a simple advantage. Rather than forcing her to

PMQs this week was a rather more even affair than usual. Since the Budget, the Labour leader’s team have clearly spent some time reading the Tory manifesto. Jeremy Corbyn came to the chamber armed with some decent questions about how proposed changes to the national funding formula broke the Tory manifesto pledge to protect the money that followed your child to school. This was a clever subject to go on as the Tory backbenches are not happy about this proposed new national funding formula.  In response, May kept pointing out that the issue of school funding was one that has been ducked for years by government despite a general acknowledgement that

The government’s decision to announce a U-turn on the planned rise in Class 4 National Insurance contributions minutes before PMQs meant that Jeremy Corbyn was left with the wrong homework for the session. Still, presented with an embarrassing government climbdown on a key Budget pledge, surely Corbyn could still come out on top? It wasn’t to be. Instead the Labour leader stumbled around for things to say in one of his worst performances to date. Corbyn began by offering May an easy pot shot when he accused her of leading a government in chaos. The Prime Minister responded with an effective — if predictable — retort that while she usually does not take lectures

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was a good example of how Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to be nimble on his feet lets him down. The Labour leader had a perfect peg for his questions about social care, which was last night’s leak of recordings in which Surrey Council leader David Hodge spoke of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. His first question was a good one, asking the Prime Minister to explain the difference between a ‘sweetheart deal’ and a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. May denied that there was a special deal for Surrey, and repeated that denial in subsequent answers. But what Corbyn didn’t pick up on was the careful wording of May’s denial. She said:

The clash between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister used to be the main event at PMQs. But this is fast ceasing to be the case. The most interesting bit of today’s session came after Corbyn had finished asking May questions. In her exchanges with Angus Robertson, May refused to confirm that all powers in devolved areas, such as agriculture and fishing, would go to Holyrood post Brexit. Now, there is—obviously—a bit of Nationalist grievance hunting going on here and having multiple agricultural regimes within the UK would not be entirely sensible. But it would be a mistake if Brexit did not lead to a more powerful

When Ed Miliband was asking the questions at PMQs, we didn’t think we were living through a vintage age of parliamentary debate. But every week, Miliband’s performances looks better by comparison. Jeremy Corbyn went on the right topic today, the NHS, but his questions were all over the place and lacked coherence. Indeed, at one point it was hard to tell what the actual question was. But, I suspect, that Labour will feel that if Corbyn has managed to bump the NHS up the agenda ahead of the two by-elections on Thursday, then it will have been a worthwhile exercise. But it is telling that any advantage Labour gained from

How to sabotage a deadly ambush. This was Jeremy Corbyn’s contribution to the political play-book today. He came to Parliament lethally armed. A cache of secret messages apparently between a Government wonk and the leader of Surrey County Council suggest some very shady goings-on. Mr Corbyn’s task was simple. Read out the intercepts and watch Mrs May squirm. He duly recited the incriminating information. And it was astonishing. It was unanswerable. The PM was accused of conspiracy. How would she plead? Well, she didn’t. She couldn’t say a word because Mr Corbyn was busy wittering on, muddling the issue, and giving his foe a priceless gift. Time. Time to think.

Mrs May has spent the week meeting naughty presidents. Today she was made to pay for it. Parliamentarians were queuing up to scold her for missing a great opportunity to bleat, pout, whine and nag on the world stage. She’s been to America where she failed to lecture Donald Trump on his meanness to Muslims and his impatience with climate change dogma. She was also supposed to bring up his waterboarding habit and his rapacity with women. Then she went to Turkey where her haranguing of President Erdogan was insufficiently shrill. Labour MPs seem to want the PM to traverse the globe like an irascible fitness instructor, bull-horn in hand, barging into

Mr Corbyn has spent a week shuddering at goblins that don’t exist. At least outside his head. But he wants his posse of demons to exist in our heads too. So he keeps conjuring them up. He says Mrs May is about to turn Britain into ‘an offshore tax haven.’ Being a Puritan he hasn’t noticed that this has an attractive, Hefner-ish feel. It suggests white sands and azure waves, the tinkling of steel-drums, and bottles of Red Stripe being served at ten cents a time by pouting lovelies straining out of their bra-cups. To be fair, Corbyn’s team of wordsmiths have spotted the problem. So the boss has been

At PMQs today, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t have a disaster: there was no repeat of yesterday’s shambles. But he didn’t take full advantage of the opening he had. Yes, he went on the NHS—but he didn’t cause Theresa May as much trouble as he could have. There was no reference to the Times’ story this morning claiming that Downing Street is blaming Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS. Nor did he manage to create any daylight between May and the Health Secretary over changes to the four-hour waiting target and Hunt’s warning that people turning up to A&E unnecessarily is a large part of the problem. This isn’t to