Boring. That was the universal response to Wednesday’s first prime minister’s questions of the new parliament. Where was the screaming, yelling, insulting and air punching? This is supposed to be Strictly Come Politicking. Get off stage, the two of you. Zero points.
The Telegraph condemned the new PMQs as a “love-in”. The prime minister was like a teenager “breaking the news he had lost his virginity”, according to one headline. For an Independent columnist it was intolerably tame, just “good-natured joshing”. The Times’s sketch writer concluded that the new horses “will need time to learn to bray”, noting that it was so dull some MPs walked out before the curtain.
PMQs is now virtually the only time each week when MPs actually fill the chamber, which is why the session is reported not just by lobby journalists but also by sketch writers as drama critics. For the most part, the sketch is the page you know you can turn to for a belly laugh.
The popularity of watching two apparent grownups being rude to each other is shown by the fact that PMQs is now being broadcast globally by the BBC. It is a particular favourite on America’s C-Span network. One addict, President George HW Bush, could not believe John Major would descend into “that pit … nose-to-nose with the opposition, all yelling at each other”.
The result, of course, is that PMQs is famously hated by its supposed star performers. Tony Blair called PMQs in his memoirs “the most nerve-racking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience” of his entire premiership. To him they were the “emotional, intellectual and political depository of all that is irrational”. He dared some reform, cutting PMQs from two to one session a week. He said he would still prefer to have his teeth drilled for 30 minutes without anaesthetic. Rishi Sunak was so obsessed by the event that he had a team working on it all week. Wednesday mornings were devoted to learning lines, trials and rehearsals, with one aide acting as Starmer. This cannot have been a sensible use of his time.
Most party leaders I have asked agree with Blair, though not the two whose style most suited that sort of limelight: Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson. PMQs portrays parliament as a battleground rather than a source of wisdom or debate. Agreement is portrayed as defeat and compromise as a sign of weakness. For the past year Britain might have benefited from at least the occasional joint act of leadership from two civilised men, Keir Starmer and Sunak, who have much in common. As it was, they were required to play-act a series of childish and distasteful brawls, possibly entertaining but with no conceivable public benefit.
The House of Commons is a club notoriously resistant to reform. MPs will not wish to end PMQs. They might appear in the show as a Greek chorus, but at least their constituents see what they are up to all day. As for parliamentary reform, Starmer has promised merely to tinker with the House of Lords, with no mention of the Commons. His predecessor, Blair, understood that serious reform – be it the Bank of England, elected mayors or PMQs – was best made at once.
The House of Commons has come through the past five years ramshackle and traumatised. Its essentially 19th-century procedures desperately need updating. Even the Roman Catholic church has seen more change. I could hardly believe last week’s groundhog day, when Starmer asked George Robertson to chair a review of defence policy. That is exactly what Blair asked the same man to do in 1997. I was on his committee then and we were forbidden to say anything radical for fear of making Labour seem weak. I bet Robertson has been told the same today.
The business of the Commons, like that of national assemblies in most democracies, is best conducted by committees vested with serious powers. The present chamber is dying on its feet, being thinly occupied for just part of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Ministerial question times are the only well-attended moments, generating gladiatorial heat rather than light. The result is that debate makes little difference to anything and is more to do with the self-advancement of those debating.
The machinery of modern government should be static, not dynamic. The examination of the prime minister on issues of the day should not be a gag routine. It would be far better conducted as a regular press conference. The popular US president Theodore Roosevelt used to conduct two a day. As for the choices that need to be made by ministers, they are best discussed not in partisan debate but by a serious committee. In the prime minister’s case, this takes place at his occasional appearances before a collective of the select committee chairs.
Select committees, created in 1979, are one of the few innovations in British legislative oversight since the second world war. They are not just the best vehicle for such oversight – they are the only one. They can sometimes fail. No select committee properly scrutinised Brexit; the price is now being paid by importers and exporters across the country. The public accounts committee has been woefully lax over HS2 and defence procurement. But such failings cannot be corrected by antics in the Commons chamber.
The ceremonial ego bruising and massaging of leading politicians is not public accountability. PMQs are entertainment fodder and should go the way of hereditary peers and the changing of the guard. Starmer promised change. He has yet to show the guts to do it.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
