Boris’s sloppy PMQs performances are becoming a problem

A former prime minister once told me that PMQs in the Commons is an event that can only be enjoyed in retrospect, after the final whistle has blown. Even if exchanges with the opposition leader had gone well, there remained the possibility of being tripped up by a minor party leader, an opposition backbencher or a member of the ‘awkward squad’ on your own side.

Tony Blair disliked it so much that one of his first acts as PM was to cut the sessions from two a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) to just one: a half-hour joust on a Wednesday. His prime motivation for doing so was that he knew the amount of time PMQs preparation had taken up when he was Leader of the Opposition. He concluded that devoting a similar chunk of the working week to it as prime minister would reduce his capacity to govern. But Blair certainly did still prepare intensely for his weekly battles with the likes of William Hague, eventually coining a killer soundbite (‘good jokes, bad judgment’) to neutralise the merciless mockery that Hague subjected him to.