PMQs verdict: Wednesday Shouty Time

We’re going to need a new name for what we’re still hilariously calling PMQs. Prime Minister’s Questions is, alas, just a theory of what should happen, not a reflection of what actually takes place.

Half an hour of shouting, question avoidance, insults, planted questions, bad jokes and jeering.

If it didn’t exist you certainly wouldn’t invent it. Unless you were a deeply disturbed individual.

“Wednesday Shouty Time” seems like a far more appropriate name for what we endure in the name of “scrutiny” each week. Out with PMQs, in with WST. At least it’s honest. Quite often the time feels WSTed anyway…

Not that it’s new for Cameron to avoid answering questions, but today was just the most flagrant example. Four times Cameron was asked if he backed the key proposal from the Beecroft report – widely known as “Fire at will” – which would make it easier to sack people. Four times Cameron praised the report but refused to answer the question.

Slippery doesn’t even come close.

His response – to attack the unions. Of course! What verve! What elan! According to Dave, the unions dictate Labour policy. Which is amusing for two reasons a) unions are increasingly hacked off the Labour DOESN’T back union
policies enough and b) Cameron was, at that very moment endorsing a report by a major Tory donor.

Come on DC. Try not to be so blatantly hypocritical. LOL.

But if this session were already descending into farce (which it clearly was), then Flashman Cam confirmed it with his attack on Ed Balls as a “mumbling idiot”. The Balls obsession continues. The shadow chancellor is so far under the PM’s skin he may as well wear him as an apron for his next BBQ.

It was all frightfully un-Prime Ministerial. What would his coalition partners think? But here’s the cherry on the WST cake.

There were no Lib Dems on the front bench. Not one. They had left him to stew on his own.

And stew he did.