Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s stilted second PMQs performance

If the purpose of the first few Prime Minister’s Questions sessions that a new leader faces is to assert their authority, both over the Opposition and their new party, then Theresa May managed that today. She didn’t do it with a great deal of panache, though: the Prime Minister was much less fluent and confident today than she was in her all-conquering first stint at the Dispatch Box before the summer. Her scripted jokes sounded a little less comfortable and natural, too. But she managed to give good responses to Jeremy Corbyn’s rambling questions, particularly this little lecture about the differences between the two of them:

‘I say to the right honourable gentleman this: he may have a model of society where he doesn’t want to see private landlords, where he wants to see the government owning everything, the government deliberating on everything and the government doing everything for everybody.

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