Pmqs

That was fun. Boris Johnson’s debut at PMQs had a bit of everything. Comedy, passion, swearing, name-calling, and oodles of synthetic outrage. Several parliamentary conventions were tested to breaking point. The PM instantly took the fight to his opponents who are conspiring to halt Brexit by passing a delaying measure later today. ‘The Surrender Bill’, he called it. He labelled Jeremy Corbyn ‘a chlorinated chicken’ who believes that Britain’s closest allies reside in Teheran and Caracas, and not in Berlin or the White House. ‘I think he’s Caracas.’ He accused Labour of inciting ‘mobs of Momentum activists to paralyse the traffic.’ He imagined hordes of black-clad rebels blocking bridges, chanting

Good afternoon. I’m speaking to you live from my desk in Downing Street for the first-ever People’s Question Time, People’s PMQs, and at the moment I’m afraid MPs are all still off on holiday. But I can take questions unpasteurised, unmediated from you via this machine. So I’m going to go straight away to Luther in Cheshire. And Luther says, ‘I’d like to know how you intend to leave the EU on the 31st of October with no movement from the EU on their terms and still so much opposition in Parliament.’ Luther, you’ve asked the crucial question and there’s a terrible kind of collaboration, as it were, going on

A thin turnout for Theresa May’s penultimate PMQs. Labour members were skulking in corridors plotting to oust their leader. And Tories, especially devout Remainers, were busy talking to journalists about their lifelong commitment to a no-deal Brexit. Mrs May seemed to be angling for the post of chief attack dog at the next election. Jeremy Corbyn asked her about climate change but she raised Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. ‘You have failed the test of leadership,’ she said, bending the rules by addressing him directly. ‘Stand up and apologise.’ Breaches of protocol always add extra juice to Commons rows. Corbyn retorted that Labour was the first party to pass anti-racism legislation in

Jeremy Corbyn took a bizarre approach to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, choosing largely to have a go at the likely leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson, rather than the woman opposite him. He choose to focus his questions to Theresa May on cuts to legal aid, branding them a ‘Lib Dem decision’ and pointing out that Jo Swinson was the junior coalition minister who took the cuts through the Commons. It was additionally odd that Corbyn chose to talk about legal aid, given it offered a reasonably easy leap for May into the way the party is handling tonight’s Panorama on anti-Semitism. But the big story of the day

PMQs is clearly broken and only Brexiteers know how to fix it. Theresa May should leave. Jeremy Corbyn should remain and put questions to Boris next week and to Jeremy Hunt the week after. A test of both candidates in match conditions would be welcomed by all. But it won’t happen. A Tory party that can’t extract us from the EU has no hope of giving PMQs the tweak it needs. Today we had another snooze-in with Tory backbenchers falling over each other to congratulate May on her exemplary record and visionary leadership. She’s the worst PM since Eden and they all pretended she was Pericles. Andrea Leadsom praised her

The title ‘Father of the House’ tends to give the bearer a chronic problem with wind. The present holder, Ken Clarke, stood up at PMQs and asked a question of Gibbonian magnitude and complexity. Among the gusts of prose was a useful point about spending. ‘It would be extremely unwise for the outgoing government to make reckless commitments,’ he said. He was ignored. Member after member tried to cadge money from Mrs May before she quits the Downing Street cash-pile. The Conservative MP Marcus Jones wanted a handout for shops in Nuneaton, while Paul Scully made the case for SEN children. Tim Loughton, whose constituency abuts the sea, proposed a

A festival of inertia at PMQs today. A party without a leader, a Government without a purpose and a Parliament without a programme. Theresa May, in Portsmouth for the D-Day commemorations, was understudied by David Lidington who looks like a maths professor but performs like a comedian. His waggish streak is undermined by his gentlemanly dislike of mocking women. He blushed and giggled as he pointed out that Jeremy Corbyn’s regular deputy, Emily Thornberry, had been ‘despatched to internal exile somewhere’. Her crime, he teased, was to ‘outshine the Dear Leader’ at PMQs. In Corbyn’s place stood Rebecca Long-Bailey. Lidington warned that she too risked being ‘airbrushed out of Politburo

Tories who still support Theresa May are as rare as bumblebees in Antarctica. Her backbenchers were too polite to mention her imminent departure at PMQs but her opponents couldn’t resist poking fun. The PM began with her ritual announcement about ‘meeting ministerial colleagues and others’. Up stood John Woodcock. ‘She may not have long left, and good luck with those “meetings later today”’. Mike Amesbury said his question about lease-holders would interest her, ‘now that she’s about to move house.’ Toby Perkins asked her to increase SEN funding ‘in her final days.’ Jeremy Corbyn led on school budgets too. They’re down, he claimed. As he always does. No, no, they’re

PMQs began with Janet Daby calling for a mass-cull of the working-class. The Labour MP relayed the experience of an industrious constituent who already has two jobs, on zero-hour contracts, and seeks a third. ‘Ban zero hours contracts!’ she declared in outrage. Obviously she’s fed up with people working in her constituency. Much easier if they all starve to death. And with her policies they will. Labour leader Jeremy Corybn had good news about the NHS which he’d failed to interpret correctly. Forty per cent of staff last year, he said, had suffered ‘work-related stress’. This means that 60 per cent of them hadn’t. Not a twinge, not a whisper of

Best mates on Brexit, deadly foes on everything else. The highly suspicious search for a Lab/Con Brexit accord was suspended today as the party leaders exchanged blows at PMQs. These covert ‘talks’ are clearly a blackmail effort contrived in Downing Street. By threatening her MPs with a Labour-backed Customs Union, Theresa May hopes to secure their support for her thrice-rejected withdrawal agreement. It might just work. The EU wasn’t mentioned at PMQs but the Labour leader found alternative sources of distress. ‘Things are getting worse,’ he crowed at the Prime Minister as he ran through a hit-parade of sob-stories: inequality, malnutrition, rising crime, falling police numbers and care-home failures. There’s

Never mind sabotaging Brexit. The sight of MPs clamouring to be photographed alongside Greta Thunberg yesterday dealt yet another harmful blow to our democracy. The Swedish clairvoyant is the constituent of no British politician. She contributes not a penny in taxes to HM Treasury. And yet our parliamentarians lined up to listen in wonder to her ramblings about the future. Thunberg’s message, echoing the prophecies of Extinction Rebellion, comes as music to a politician’s ears. Humanity is doomed, says the pig-tailed time-traveller. MPs love the rhetoric of global catastrophe because it means more influence for them, and less for oiks like us. At PMQs the understudies took the stage. Emily

An astonishing PMQs. Theresa May no longer looks like a sheeted ghost. She’s quit the sick-bay and acquired a veneer of normality. Chipper, brisk, in command. Cheerful even. Jeremy Corbyn gave a lacklustre performance typified by the artless syntax of his opening phrase: ‘Her chaotic and incompetent government has driven our country into chaos.’ He probed her on the indicative votes but she shrugged him aside. Using a favourite ploy she poured scorn on his forensic skills. ‘He shouldn’t just read out the question he thought of earlier,’ she hectored. ‘Listen to the answer.’ She picked at Labour’s confused positions on the Customs Union and the second referendum. ‘What happened to straight-talking honest

The Brexit kerfuffle has been so much fun that she wants three more months of it. That was the PM’s message to parliament today. At the start of this rowdy session some members seem to think they could terminate May’s career live on TV. Pete Wishart, the first member called, laid into her mishandling of Brexit and flung three blunt syllables at her, ‘weak, weak, weak.’ This struck the wrong note. Too brutal. And rather cheap to use a phrase coined by Tony Blair to undermine John Major. There was a hint that the PM wishes to retain control of her destiny. She laid special emphasis on her official rank

Ten days since the start of the Great February Revolution (as historians are unlikely to call it) and the breakaway MPs must be feeling a bit miffed. The rebels, tagged as ‘TIGs’ in the press, are blessed with every advantage a political movement could hope for – apart from a logo, a creed, a headquarters, a constitution and a following. The 11-strong group have become the silent stars of PMQs. Seen but not heard. The Speaker failed again this Wednesday to ask a TIG to speak. Does their reticence signify anything? Perhaps trouble is brewing and the TIG bigwigs are trying to stop the membership from cracking up into dissident

Today’s PMQs was a rather surreal occasion. Sitting high up on the opposition benches were the new Independent Group of MPs. But none of them tried to ask a question and both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May chose to ignore the issue. Instead, we were treated to May repeatedly raising the defection of a Labour councillor in Brighton. I still think that this new group does more damage to Labour than the Tories. I doubt that many Tory voters will be attracted to a party led by the most ardent advocates of a second referendum. But the defection of these three Tory MPs risks creating an impression that the two

Bit of a different day at PMQs. There wasn’t a peep from Remain Corner where Anna Soubry, Nicky Morgan and Sarah Woollaston like to hold court. Perhaps they’re all re-training as Uber-drivers in case a snap-election renders them jobless. And we heard nothing from the Labour party’s Bullingdon Club of Brexit-saboteurs, Yvette Cooper, Stephen Kinnock and Chuka Umunna. Thank goodness Ken Clarke spared us his usual parrot-recital about suspending Article 50. And the ‘people’s vote’ wasn’t mentioned at all. Instead Labour’s C-listers had their turn. Jack Dromey, a gifted nihilist, wore a bright summery jacket which contrasted sharply with the dire news he recited from his sat-nav. ‘We are 58

History will remember Sir James Dyson as the pioneer of the bagless vacuum-cleaner. Thanks to his genius, we are now able to interrupt our chores and stare in amazement at mini-tornados of dust and filth swirling around in a transparent cylinder. This void of rubbish has been exported all over the world – not unlike our parliamentary system. But its knighted creator made an error this week when he announced that Singapore is to be the new home of his world HQ. This looks like an endorsement of the EU which has just struck a trade-deal with Singapore. The Bagless Wonder is supposed be a Brexiteer. Tory backbencher James Gray

PMQs began with tributes to the late Paddy Ashdown. The philandering man-of-action was the closest thing the Liberal Democrats ever got to James Bond. And though he was often ridiculed by MPs as a self-important windbag, today they hailed him as one of the greats. In this respect the House truly reflected the people. Death brings out the hypocrite in all of us. May offered a few respectful words. The Lib Dems were represented by the weirdly pompous Sir Edward Davey whose knighthood has swollen his head without affecting the capacity of his brain. At least his tribute seemed genuinely heartfelt. The most sincere effort came from Jeremy Corbyn. ‘He