Tag: PMQs


  • The Commons Weekly #9

    It was inevitable that Mrs Badenoch (North-West Essex, Conservative) LoTO would concentrate on the Mandelson Affair at PMQs. She did not disappoint. What transpired, however, was an astonishing demonstration of how isolated from reality the Prime Minister seems to have become, “Sir Olly Robbins… puts to bed all the allegations levelled at me by those opposite…

  • The Commons Weekly #8

    Following Tuesday evening’s Edward Heath Lecture in Salisbury by very fed up Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, it was not astonishing that Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex, Conservative) LoTO focused all six of her questions on Defence Spending. LoTO rose at 12:03:05 and asked: Mr Speaker intervened in apparent embarrassment to cut off Sir Keir’s…

  • The Commons Weekly #7

    It was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded the Editorial Board (in this massive global organisation of 1) not to make the pic of the PM with his head in his hands at PMQs the photo lead today. It’s an Open Goal Keir! Open Goal. No-one cares. Starmer II: the Caretaker Years has opened…

  • The Commons Weekly #6

    The Prime Minister almost succeeded in breaking PMQs on 18th March. Backbencher Andrew Snowden (Fylde, Conservative) summed up the problem: “Every week the Prime Minister comes here and reads out this pre-scripted nonsense that bears no resemblance to the questions he is actually asked. The Leader of the Opposition asked him about Peter Mandelson and…

  • The Commons Weekly #5

    PMQs really have become a farce. In other news, we have decided to present The Commons Weekly in reverse date order starting with the most recent news from that cockpit of brilliance. At PMQs the Speaker briefly awoke from his slumbers to rebuke the PM for trying to reconfigure the weekly event as Questions for…

  • The Commons Weekly #4

    Special education: In trying to set out the Government’s proposed changes to SEND policy Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South, Labour) Secretary of State for Education, outlined how a “new” £4bn will be spent on Individual Support Plans over the rest of this Parliament. SEND certainly needs radical reform, but these changes seem unlikely to…