PMQs Verdict: It was more inclusive, but was it as effective?

It was certainly different, but was it any good? Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News this morning that his approach to Prime Minister’s Questions would be “rather different” and a move away from “yah boo sucks theatrical politics”.

By Saturday night, just hours after his election as Labour leader, Corbyn sent out an email to members and supporters, asking what they wanted him to ask David Cameron at the despatch box this week. It looked like this:

By the time he stood up for PMQs today, 40,000 questions had been submitted. For the past few days, the leader’s office have been looking through the most popular topics, and then reflecting on how they compare with Corbyn’s own priorities to arrive at the questions he would ask. Today, we saw the new leader pose his six questions (from Marie, Stephen, Paul, Claire, Gail and Angela) on three main topics: housing, tax credits and mental health.

Corbyn told the PLP on Monday that housing was his primary policy priority, while his introduction of a Shadow Mental Health minister, Luciana Berger, to the Shadow Cabinet, shows that that is clearly also an issue he will concentrate on. With last night’s vote on tax credits, there was an obvious hook to hang the other subject on.

But he also did as he said, and wasn’t “theatrical” in the chamber. He was measured, slow and restrained. This ‘new style of PMQs’ seems to have divided opinion, and there are clearly both positives and negatives to the approach.

It was certainly a more ‘inclusive’ way of going about things, a word which Jeremy often uses to describe the way he wishes politics was. As a gimmick, it worked very well – and it was a gimmick, allowing him to ask whatever he liked while connecting with the broad support he has amassed over the past few months. It will appear on the news tonight, be discussed on current affairs programmes, and the story will be how Corbyn changed PMQs. Evidence of him changing politics is exactly what he wants.

The style also plays to his strength. We saw yesterday that he is no soaring orator, and the moment PMQs is reduced to a shouting match with David Cameron, he will have lost. This allowed him to conduct the debate in a way that he is familiar and at ease with. His nerves must have been shredded, and after a tough first few days he will not have wanted to be pushed outside his comfort zone too much. There may have been no blows landed either way, but we can chalk that up as a success. After five years, Ed Miliband still wasn’t sure what his best approach to PMQs was. Things could have been much worse.

The downsides of it are that having pre-set questions means it is worse for holding the Prime Minister to account, which is, after all, rather the point. The inflexibility of it does not allow for Corbyn to react to events as they unfold, or try and push Cameron on a question he feels was evaded. Perhaps in future weeks, we will see two or three questions from the public, with Jeremy using the others to investigate and scrutinise Cameron’s answers a bit more.

And, while it played to the Labour leader’s strengths, it played to the Prime Minister’s too. Corbyn slightly rambly openers (he should be more direct) clearly signposted his questions (“the first one, which is about housing”), allowing Cameron time to prepare a response, work out what lines he wants to get across, and deliver them in a friendly, conversational tone. He is at his worse when his inner “Flashman” is exposed – will this style rile him up enough?

New leaders always promise to change PMQs. Few do. A cursory glance at a Hansard report from last February shows that people are put off by the “political point-scoring”, and how “noisy” and “aggressive” it is. Rather than tradition, it perhaps invariably lapses back into the old ‘Punch and Judy politics’ because it proves effective, in its own way.

Corbyn will be pleased to have emerged from his first encounter unscathed, but he’ll need to be more pointed if he wants to draw blood.