Pmqs

PMQs began with the Labour MP Peter Dowd asking Theresa May if she didn’t wish that she had told Boris Johnson to FO rather than sending him to the FO. To which, May replied that he was a fine Foreign Secretary — an FFS. At this point, it seemed that the session, the last PMQs before Christmas, might descend into festive silliness. But that didn’t happen. Jeremy Corbyn urged people to buy the Jo Cox charity single, a call May echoed, before moving onto social care. Over the next five questions, Corbyn turned in his best PMQs performance — admittedly not a particularly high a bar to clear. Corbyn kept

The PM is abroad. Her vacant throne was occupied by David Lidington, the agreeably lightweight Leader of the House. He’s confident, fast-talking, well-briefed but glib and untidy-looking. He doesn’t improvise well. Physically he’s an unrestful presence. He hops and twitches and pecks and dabs like a pigeon attacking a box of Chicken McNuggets. For comic effect he likes to turn sideways with both arms outstretched as if entreating somebody in the wings. A speaking coach would tell him to calm down, put his hands in his pockets and stop head-butting imaginary bees. He made no errors today. He didn’t exactly shine. Bumptious competence was his level. Opposite him was Emily

Sometimes PMQs is about policy. Sometimes it’s about posturing. Today everyone was striking attitudes like mad. Jeremy Corbyn over-stated the levels of suffering in the country. He painted a picture of workhouse Britain where ‘four million children’ live ‘in poverty’. He means ‘relative poverty’, an elastic term, which covers every child in the land, including those of David Cameron who are ‘poor’ relative to the children of Bill Gates. God-squad veteran, Chris Bryant, argued that the state shouldn’t just improve our lives but our deaths as well. He took us back to a funeral he once conducted during an adolescent phase when he thought he was a vicar. ‘Everyone was

People say Corbyn’s getting better. I wonder. He seemed out of touch today. Soaring employment, falling inflation, the booming stock-market, the Trump ascendancy, the implosion of Isis, the Aleppo siege? He ignored the lot. He brought up the exiled Chagos Islanders whose right to return has been denied for decades. Having mentioned them, and enjoyed a flush of reflected sanctity, he dropped the issue entirely. Poor old Chagos. Its scattered natives are used to being abandoned by false-friend statesmen but this seemed particularly cynical. Corbyn’s main brainwave today was to deploy all his rhetorical skill, all his mastery of the political arts, to lure Mrs May into accidentally disclosing her red-lines

Early bloopers at PMQs. The session began with Theresa May offering Jeremy Corbyn her congratulations on becoming a grandfather. A mistake. The tribute was due elsewhere. But the improvised hilarities that accompanied this blunder burned up several minutes. Corbyn chose to attack on welfare. Over the last week Labour’s sound-bite factory has supplied their leader with some decent phrases. ‘Institutional barbarity’ is their name for giving a timetable to welfare claimants. Changes to invalidity payments are called ‘imposing poverty on the most vulnerable.’ But flabby Corbyn floundered with these potent weapons and failed to deploy them effectively. A bit like his tie. The sleek crimson knot was threaded correctly but

Today it became clear why Corbyn is a lousy politician. He’s too interesting. The variety of life is simply too fascinating for him to prosper on the public stage. In a word, he’s not dull enough to be a statesman. A key attribute of leadership is the readiness to bore oneself, and everyone else, by repeating the same phrase over and over again. Successful politicians are happy to recite their favourite soundbites day in day out knowing that only at the thousandth repetition will the vital syllables grind their way into the public consciousness. Mr Corbyn has a great soundbite — shambolic Tory Brexit — which he needs to reiterate

Today we saw government without opposition. At least without opposition in the hands of the Opposition leader. Rambling, disorganised Jeremy Corbyn spent his six questions getting nowhere over the health service. Familiar catcalls were heard on both sides. ‘You wasted billions.’ ‘No we invested billions.’ Mrs May attempted to break the record-book by insisted that ‘half a trillion’ will be spent on health during this parliament. Corbyn’s backbenchers took up the cause. The Labour party is teeming with broken princes and queens-across-the-water who spend their time brooding, and muttering, and plotting their route back to power. Any chance to expose Corbyn as a waffling nuisance is happily seized. Lisa Nandy

Corbs is back. And he’s getting his act together. He showed up at PMQs looking estate-agent smart. White shirt, natty blue suit, a red tie mounting, nearly, to its correct position at the throat. His second landslide victory has suffused him with calmness and authority. As he boasted to Mrs May, his position as leader was confirmed by 300,000 members of his party. ‘More than her,’ he needled. The Labour leader is changing his tactics. He’s ditched his habit of using PMQs to pass on gripes from a mysterious Customer Complaints Desk at Labour HQ. This politically suspicious and psychologically whiney ploy was never likely to prosper. It painted Corbyn

Remember how it was? Many fans of Westminster still recall with fondness the happy afternoons when the Tories used to greet Ed Miliband at PMQs with a storm of ironic contempt. Nowadays the Labour-shambles is barely worth a half-hearted jeer let alone a burst of orchestrated scoffing. When Corbyn stands up at the despatch box, with his Oxfam suit and his whopping tofu-tum, he gets something close to library-silence from the Conservatives. There’s a Chinese whisper of resentment, a few chuntering snuffles, the odd yawned harrumph. That’s all. It’s the sound of 300 well-fed hogs resettling themselves during an afternoon nap. What politics needs is the intoxicating roar of crack-troops

Bit early for a lap of honour. At PMQs Mrs May congratulated her government (i.e. herself) on fifty marvellous days in government. And she drew comparisons between her polished style and the Corbyn car-wreck. One view is that the chimpanzees’ tea-party currently posing as Her Majesty’s opposition should remain beneath the attention of Number 10. Mrs May disagrees and she used Labour’s woes as the starting point for some carefully scripted comedy. With mixed results. Delivering gags is tough. Delivering someone else’s gags is tougher. Delivering someone else’s out-of-date gags is so tough that it borders on crazy. But the PM is, understandably perhaps, tempted by the illusion of omnipotence