Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s bid to sound authoritative at PMQs falls flat

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions wasn’t exactly comfortable for Theresa May, but neither was it catastrophic. The session has been running along the same lines since the snap election result: Jeremy Corbyn has plenty of material to play with in terms of a government in disarray that isn’t confronting some of the most important domestic issues, but he never really manages to leave May looking less authoritative than when the session started.

Today he focused on the problems with the roll-out of Universal Credit, which is spreading from being the concern of welfare policy specialists in parliament to being a political row. Conveniently, the Tory rebel ringleader on this matter Heidi Allen had a question on the Order Paper, which she was always going to use to ask about Universal Credit, and so the session had a flow from leaders’ exchanges to backbench questions.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in