Theresa May plays the blame game at PMQs

The Speaker continues to use PMQs as a sort of rolling news platform where his millions of fans can catch up on all his latest activities. As a devoted Berc-oholic, I was delighted to learn this afternoon that my hero has made a new friend. Two friends in fact. He delivered the announcement early in the session when he stood up and addressed the chamber with all the solemnity of an archbishop opening a youth detention centre: ‘May I remind the house that we are today visited by an American state senator whom I had the great privilege of meeting earlier with his wife.’ He urged MPs to entertain these important guests with a bravura display of parliamentary repartee. Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn asked six questions about buses.

Buses are in crisis, he grumbled. Bus routes are being ‘wiped out’. Fares are soaring. ‘Ridership’ is in steep decline. The problem, he carped, is that profit-gobbling bus monopolies are sucking billions in profits from low-income wage-slaves.