27 April 2016

PMQs: latest dire Corbyn showing merits shortest post ever

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There’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back. I watched PMQs again, so that you don’t have to. Goodness, I wish I hadn’t bothered. There is nothing much useful to say beyond the following:

1) Yvette Cooper asked a terrific question about child refugees, in a professional fashion that put the current leader of the Labour party to shame.

2) Once again Jeremy Corbyn was woefully deficient. His jokes (something about TV repeats?) made no sense. He couldn’t think on his feet and even when Cameron was vulnerable, on government plans to force all schools in England to become academies, Corbyn didn’t have the wit to adapt his questioning to skewer the Tory leader. Cameron’s responses were described as arrogant, but honestly it looked to me as though he is simply deeply frustrated by his opponent’s uselessness and in need of a proper contest.

This gives me no pleasure, and I don’t enjoy being ungallant about Corbyn. But – and I say it again – him continuing to occupy that role constitutes an act of extraordinary selfishness when it could be done by one of several people on the Labour benches who are up to the task. The UK government and Prime Minister need to be held properly to account. Corbyn can’t do it. He may be a nice man who is kind to animals, and good to his friends, but as a party leader and parliamentary performer he is a total dud.

Iain Martin is Editor of CapX