How Corbyn failed to transform PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions is now regarded in Westminster as being even more pointless than it used to be before. The general weakness of Jeremy Corbyn and his parliamentary party’s ongoing but powerless dissatisfaction with the Labour leader means that it is rarely a session where the Opposition lays a glove on the Prime Minister – and even more unusually a session which Labour MPs leave feeling proud of their party. It’s not just Labour that makes the session feel a bit miserable: even when Corbyn does score a hit, as he has done on social care in recent weeks, Tory backbenchers forget that their job as members of the legislature is to scrutinise the executive and instead squander their questions by sucking up to the Prime Minister with pointless observations about jobs fairs, motherhood, and apple pie. And that’s when they’re not making strange mooing sounds at the other side.