Pmqs

The last PMQs before Christmas will not live long in the memory. After last week’s rather entertaining Eagle Osborne clash, it was back to the Cameron and Corbyn show. The Labour leader has now abandoned his ‘new politics’ style and today asked all of his questions on the NHS. The exchanges weren’t particularly enlightening as Cameron parried the Labour leader with relative ease. Cameron was clearly keen to whip up the Tory benches and send them off for the holidays in good cheer. But the atmosphere in the Chamber remained relatively muted. . Angus Robertson went on the EU renegotiation, the subject which Corbyn should have led on as six questions

How do you unite the Labour party and cheer them up? Today the party’s MPs were cheering happily and laughing along at the jokes offered from their Dispatch Box for the first time in months. And on Monday, they managed to have a cheerful meeting of the parliamentary Labour party. One thing that was missing from both sessions was Jeremy Corbyn. The cheer that accompanied Angela Eagle as she got to her feet to ask her first question of George Osborne, who was standing in for David Cameron, was full and sincere. And though she didn’t have a particularly devastating series of questions – she managed to meander through the

Jeremy Corbyn is a rarity among politicians. All his enemies are on his own side. For the Tories, Ukip and the SNP, Corbyn is a dream made real. They could not love him more. As the riotous scenes at the shadow cabinet and parliamentary Labour party meetings this week showed, his colleagues see Corbyn and John McDonnell as modern Leninists who are mobilising their cadres to purge all dissidents from the party. Conversations with Corbyn’s aides show a gentler side to the new regime, however. They suggest the Corbynistas are unlikely to be able to control Labour MPs when they can barely control themselves. ‘Chaos’ was the word that came

Jezza started PMQs with a bit of a wobble. As he got to his feet the applause from his Labour ‘friends’ sounded like the hoarse whooshings of a punctured beach ball. Corbyn nervously offered his sympathy to the Paris terror victims and expressed concern that the slaughter of 129 innocents might increase Islamophobia in Britain. The attacks, he said, ‘have nothing in common with the 2 million Muslims who live here.’ David Cameron agreed, partially. He drew a distinction between ‘the religion of peace’ (which is Islam, in case you were getting confused) and the ‘bile spouted’ by terrorist killers. But, he said, ‘it’s not good enough to say there’s no

‘It’s getting longer and longer,’ grumped David Cameron at PMQs. A microphone picked up the aside as the session over-ran by 10 minutes. Why the delay? First, the Speaker. He’s keen to give as many backbenchers as possible a chance to pass unrecognised on national TV. Secondly, he adores the limelight himself. At the slightest pretext he’s up on his feet demanding silence on behalf of an entity called ‘the public’. That’s his name for the handful of grumblers and job-seekers who write in each week to complain that politicians aren’t speaking in chapel whispers. Thirdly there’s the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who reacts to Tory jeers by standing statue-still

Jeremy Corbyn’s growing confidence at Prime Minister’s Questions is almost perfectly in step with his growing unpopularity outside the Chamber. He has perfected his geography teacher stare of disapproval to the extent that Tory MPs now automatically fall silent when he talks for fear of being kept behind after class. And he isn’t leaping all over the place with a phone-in format that doesn’t hold the Prime Minister to account. This week, the Labour leader focused on tax credits, and highlighted David Cameron’s inability to answer his questions about whether he could guarantee that no-one would be worse off as a result of the changes. Cameron didn’t answer the questions

PMQs was a rather ill-tempered affair today. With tax credits and steel closures dominating proceedings, the two sets of benches went at each other with vigour. This was much more like an old-style PMQs than the other Corbyn sessions. The Labour leader began on the tax credits issue. His questions were beginning to rile Cameron, who — in a poor choice of words — said that he was ‘delighted’ that tax credit cuts had passed the Commons. But Corbyn then changed tack to ask about the steel industry. This eased the pressure on the Prime Minister and allowed him to regain the initiative. Corbyn finished his set of questions by

Corbyn’s PMQ’s strategy is now clear. Hopeful emailers send their lifestyle details to Labour HQ and a computer sifts the figures to find the voter likeliest to cause the prime minister’s cheeks to blush purple with shame. Today’s lucky winner was Kelly, (no surname given), a single mum on £7.20 per hour who works for 40 hours a week while caring for a disabled sprog. Did the prime minister know how much the tax credit deductions will cost her? Cameron hadn’t a clue so he talked about the rising minimum wage and falling council rents. Corbyn gave the answer: Kelly loses £1,800 a year. The question assumes that we all

Jeremy Corbyn knows he has a lot to prove at his party’s conference, which starts on Sunday. The highlight of his leadership so far has been his new tone at PMQs, which did catch attention, even if the questions he asked rather turned the session into an opportunity for David Cameron to look Prime Ministerial. The Labour leader knows he needs to make changes from that first attempt (his first ever stint at the dispatch box), but he’s not the only one mulling how to manage the session. A number of Tory MPs have told me that they have received a good load of letters and emails since that PMQs

John Bercow has long made clear that he would like MPs to behave a little better at Prime Minister’s Questions, which he believes is so rowdy that it upsets voters. Well, he seems to have got what he wants, or at least for the first week of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party. Last night, at a lecture to the think tank Policy Exchange, he was asked about the session, and whether he thought it would improve permanently. The Speaker said he didn’t believe ‘that a huge amount of additional work is required in terms of creative construction of the session’, though he added that the session could be

At the end of PMQs today, David Cameron turned to George Osborne and said, ‘Well, that was a lot less stressful.’ I think this conclusively answers the question of whether or not Cameron is worried by Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs technique of reading out questions that the public have sent in. Although, to be fair, I hear that Cameron was impressed by how calm Corbyn was today, especially considering that it was not only his PMQs debut but his  first ever appearance at the despatch box. The Prime Minister remarked afterwards that the Labour leader’s hands weren’t even shaking as he asked his questions.