Pmqs

John Bercow spares Jeremy Corbyn’s blushes at PMQs

Would she resign over Windrush? Having spent nearly eight years at the heart of government, Theresa May was clearly deeply involved in the scandal, and as PMQs began she seemed nervous and ill-at-ease. Lispy almost. She started on safe ground by thanking the Windrush generation for their ‘massive contribution’ to modern Britain. Then she garbled Windrush and turned it into ‘Windruss’. Then came this: ‘For those who have mistakenly received letters challenging them, I want to… apologise to them – and to say sorry to anyone who (has been) caused confusion and anxiety…as a result of this.’ Prezza couldn’t have put it better. She was floundering and Corbyn had yet to ask

Steerpike

Watch: Corbyn’s PMQs attack backfires spectacularly

Theresa May should have been on the backfoot at PMQs today as a result of the Windrush scandal. But, somehow, Jeremy Corbyn still managed to ensure the Prime Minister got the upper hand. The Labour leader started off the session by going on the attack; unfortunately, for Corbyn, it backfired spectacularly: JC: Yesterday, we learned that in 2010, the Home Office destroyed landing cards for a generation of Commonwealth citizens, and so have told people: we can’t find you in our system. Did the Prime Minister – the then-home secretary – sign off that decision? TM: No, the decision to destroy the landing cards was taken in 2009, under a

May’s PMQs attitude should worry Corbyn

Poor Jeremy Corbyn seemed muted and cowed at PMQs. He stooped over the despatch box, his chin down, his voice murmuring like a trapped bluebottle, his stature loose and uncertain. He grizzled through his six questions without a trace of passion or conviction. He couldn’t even whip himself into his trademark strimmer-call of petulant outrage. Is he having a bit of a crisis? Last night Jewish protestors gathered outside parliament to denounce him. Which is rather ironic. One story has it that his parents met at an anti-Mosley rally. Perhaps the parents of a future Labour leader will meet at an anti-Corbyn march. May had brought up Labour’s anti-Semitism last week

Isabel Hardman

How Jeremy Corbyn had a successful PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t pick the most obvious topic to lead on – or indeed mention – at Prime Minister’s Questions today. While the Tories are in deep discomfort on the Worboys case, the Labour leader chose instead to talk about something on which even he had to concede Theresa May has shown a fair bit of commitment over the years: mental health. It wasn’t until later in the session that the Ministry of Justice’s handling of the serial rapist’s case was raised at all. But that said, this was one of Corbyn’s best Prime Minister’s Questions. Normally when he attacks on health, he often meanders around general topics without really

James Forsyth

John Bercow should keep his opinions to himself

Late on in PMQs today, Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP, asked Theresa May about the case of a Syrian refugee in her constituency who can’t go on a school holiday to Spain as he doesn’t have the necessary papers and the Home Office are saying it will take three months to sort this out. Cherry asked the Prime Minister to intervene, to speed up the process. So, a standard, good constituency question. As was May’s reply, she said that the Home Secretary had heard what Cherry had said and would look into it. But then John Bercow rose from the chair and said ‘good’. This was completely inappropriate. It is

Jeremy Corbyn shows why he shouldn’t stick to the script at PMQs

Brexit is going well, apparently. And the prime minister seemed in chipper mood at PMQs. She was even enjoying herself. To neutrals this is a distressing sight. To fans of the Tory leader it must seem downright dangerous. History has taught us that when May feels she’s on top the world, the world promptly lands on top of May. Corbyn raised council tax. His theme was Tory misrule, higher bills and vanishing services. Privatisation fetishists at Northamptonshire, he said, had caused the council to implode entirely. May felt herself on solid ground as she fought back by cataloguing Corbyn’s troubles at council level which have led to two recent Labour

Isabel Hardman

Can Corbyn keep up the pressure on May on council cuts?

Jeremy Corbyn had a good line of attack at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, choosing to focus on the financial crisis at Northamptonshire Council. When the Labour leader chooses a less-obvious topic, he has the benefit of surprise, but also the disadvantage of appearing to be avoiding talking about something more important. Today, though, Corbyn had also worked out a smart introductory question, which ended with him asking if what was happening at Northamptonshire was down to ‘incompetence at a local level of national level’. This was a difficult question for Theresa May to answer, as it would involve either criticising her own government, or suggesting that Tories weren’t very good

John Bercow was curiously quiet at PMQs

John Bercow, parliament’s anti-bullying tsar, was strangely reticent at PMQs today. The all-but-speechless Speaker limited himself to a single intervention. ‘Order! Lots of questions to get through. And they must be heard.’ That was it. Twelve brisk words. Usually he spends several minutes bobbing up and down and screeching at MPs about the importance of behaving decorously in the chamber, and ‘conducting themselves in a statesmanlike manner’ – one of his favourite phrases. Allegations of misconduct seem to have curbed his interfering verbosity. What a relief. With no interruptions from the umpire, the session moved fast for once. The Russian crisis has made the PM look imposingly Churchillian in the last

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn puts himself on the back foot at PMQs

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions ran along such familiar lines that it almost felt like a glitch in the Matrix. Jeremy Corbyn decided to peg his oft-asked questions about the NHS to Stephen Hawking’s death, pointing out that the world-famous scientist was also a passionate defender of the health service.  As usual, those questions weren’t great. You’d think that given the amount of practice the Labour leader has had in asking questions about healthcare in this session, he might have worked out how to do it. But instead he offered a mix of case studies and general questions about funding that allowed Theresa May to glide through the exchanges and also

‘Mansplaining’ Corbyn plumbs new depths at PMQs

Jezza was on spectacularly dreary form at PMQs. He droned through a communique about International Women’s Day which made the celebration sound inexpressively dispiriting. The movement is all about ‘how far we’ve come and how far we have to go,’ he moaned. He sounded like an Arctic explorer giving a live commentary as he slices off his frost-bitten toes, one by one, with a pen-knife. May hadn’t mentioned Women’s Day. And Corbyn, by bringing it up, had laid himself open to attack. It was swift and deadly. And beautiful in its way. ‘Thank-you for telling me it’s International Women’s Day tomorrow,’ said May in a voice that was full of

Isabel Hardman

How Theresa May had a surprisingly strong PMQs

Theresa May should have had a rather difficult Prime Minister’s Questions today. Jeremy Corbyn chose to lead on the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and then moved onto rough sleeping. Both matters are vulnerabilities for May, and ones Corbyn has consistently made a great deal of noise about. But there were two flaws in Corbyn’s approach which allowed May to have one of her strongest sessions as Prime Minister. The first was that of course she had guessed the Labour leader was most likely to lead on Saudi Arabia, and so she turned up well-prepared to offer a robust defence of Britain’s ties with the Kingdom. She

Does John Bercow think politics is illegal?

Bit of a rum PMQs today. Jeremy Corbyn, who has always loathed the EU and now pretends to admire it, asked May about Brexit. May, who has always admired the EU and now pretends to loathe it, fobbed him off with glib sound-bites. ‘Take back control of our borders,’ ‘protect workers’ rights,’ and so on. Corbyn asked a long question about the Government’s ‘desired outcome’. He got a four-word answer: ‘A bespoke economic partnership.’ Mr Speaker decided that he should be the star-turn today. Perhaps he sought to wow a posse of French MPs who were witnessing the bun-fight from the gallery. Quelling an early outbreak of shouting, the Speaker

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May’s Czech spy gag

The Jeremy Corbyn Czech spy story is something of an open goal for the Tories. It was no surprise then that Theresa May used the ongoing row to make a gag at the Labour leader’s expense at PMQs. During an exchange on Brexit, the PM told Corbyn: ‘Normally he stands up every week and asks me to sign a blank cheque. I know he likes Czechs but…’ Corbyn responded by pretending to yawn. Mr S isn’t surprised that he is growing tired of this story…

Does Jeremy Corbyn think the Tories are to blame for human mortality?

Boris Johnson came up early in PMQs. The Cabinet’s new ‘shadow chancellor’ has called for extra money – five billion quid – to be lavished on the NHS. Jeremy Corbyn asked Mrs May if she agreed. She dustily replied that the real chancellor had promised more than five billion last autumn. He’d pledged six! Six billion didn’t satisfy Mr Corbyn. He called the Prime Minister out by cutting her pledge in half and subtracting £200m. This gave £2.8bn which, he, said, had been ‘spread like thin gruel over two years.’ Good word, gruel. Evocative of prison-hulks and Dickensian poor-houses. It adds colour to Labour’s dream-picture of the Tories as a set

The government must end the curious indifference to survivors of domestic abuse

What happens to a woman who leaves domestic violence? A layman’s impression might be that she gets on with her life and tries to forget what happened to her. But a question today in the House of Commons showed that this is just not the case. The SNP’s Lisa Cameron asked Theresa May about a constituent of hers who had left her violent partner: ‘A constituent of mine has informed me that she was repeatedly raped and beaten by her ex-partner, requiring an injunction. Much to her horror, her bank would not close their joint account unless she attended with the perpetrator. When banks are left to their own discretion,

Lloyd Evans

Hopeless Jeremy Corbyn manages to out-feeble Theresa May yet again

Carillion. It doesn’t help that the name resembles a kiddie’s word, like gazillion, suggesting an astronomical sum of cash. The sudden death of this lumbering giant gave Mr Corbyn an easy route to victory at PMQs. He didn’t take it. Corbyn outlined Carillion’s recent woes: the collapsing share-price, the short positions taken by hedge-funds, the profit warnings.   This seemed to amuse Philip Hammond. ‘Profit warnings?’ he muttered audibly, ‘companies issue profit warnings all the time.’ An odd boast for a chancellor to make. Mr Corbyn’s performance lacked bite and precision. He simply rambled his way through a long description of the government’s conduct. Either, he burbled, the government had awarded contracts to

New Year, same old PMQs

Anyone hoping that 2018 would bring an improvement in the quality of debate between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, or a reduction in the length of John Bercow’s interventions, would have been disappointed by today’s session. Corbyn and May traded the usual blows on the NHS. There was little in the exchanges that was enlightening. Jeremy Corbyn listed examples of people being treated in car parks, Theresa May said that the NHS had been better prepared for winter than ever before. She then tried to turn the conversation to the shortcomings of the NHS in Labour-run Wales. The rest of the session wasn’t much more enlightening either. Indeed, Justine Greening’s

Corbyn and May drain the joy from Christmas PMQs

The last PMQs before the Christmas recess often has a rather pantomime atmosphere. Unfortunately, neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Theresa May are anywhere near nimble enough to be able to create anything more than the sort of play that everyone leaves at the interval – and today’s performance wasn’t helped by John Bercow’s decision to extend the previously half an hour session to 53 minutes with no apparent good reason. The Speaker himself contributed to the overrunning PMQs by providing interesting details about MPs’ weddings that he’d been invited to. Jeremy Corbyn had one Christmas pun, which was about there being ‘no room at the A&E’. Quite a difficult pun for

May survives awkward PMQs on homelessness

Both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May turned up in good form to PMQs today. The Labour leader was unusually nimble with his ripostes, deploying statistics on home ownership straight after the Prime Minister’s mockery of the Labour party’s attitude towards home ownership. But as usual, he didn’t manage to make the homeslessness figures that he made his key theme for his questions into a matter of great discomfort for May. The Prime Minister, for her part, managed to recover from each attack pretty well, arguing that the Conservatives were the party who believed in building more homes so that people could have a roof over their heads. She did, though,

Tory Brexiteers are clearly becoming more concerned

Remarkably, Theresa May made it through PMQs today pretty much unscathed. I cannot, though, report that this was because she launched a brilliant counter-attack or came with a way to break through the current Brexit impasse. Rather it was because Jeremy Corbyn’s questions lacked forensic precision. One suspects that if Robin Cook had been at the other despatch box, May would have had a far tougher time. There was a collective parliamentary failure today because, at the end of the 45 minute session of PMQs, we knew no more about the state of the Brexit negotiations than we did when we went in. When the DUP’s Jim Shannon asked for