PMQS, the Q&A where the questions come last

PMQS wasn’t always like this. There was a time when leader of the opposition and the prime minister would engage in a quick-fire back-and-forth of pithy questions and punchy replies, all focused on the biggest issue of the week. It would be a tennis-style rally: thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack, the ball a bright yellow blur, fizzing from one end of the court to the other.

Now that the two players are Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, however, PMQS is a slog. Rather than the allotted half-hour, it routinely lumbers on for 45, even 50 minutes. Partly it’s because Mr Corbyn’s questions are so meandering, and Mrs May’s replies so waffly. But there’s another reason: a dreary new convention we’ll call The Preamble of Platitudes.

It happens every week now. Rather than getting straight down to business, Mrs May and Mr Corbyn will begin by reciting, at some length, a list of three or four topical banalities.

One of the two leaders will mark an anniversary, wish good luck to a sports team, thank this or that branch of the public sector for all its hard work, and note that yesterday was Raising Awareness of Something Day; and then the other leader, anxious not to be outdone, will also mark the anniversary, wish good luck to the sports team, thank the branch of the public sector for all its hard work, and note that yesterday was Raising Awareness of Something Day.

To give just a few recent examples, Mrs May and Mr Corbyn have taken turns to mark the 70th anniversary of the Windrush arrivals; celebrate Kurdish New Year; congratulate the winner of the Global Teacher Award; wish good luck to the England football team; and observe that it’s World Refugee Day, or National Carers’ Week. No actual questions or answers on these subjects; just the two leaders’ humdrum witterings about them.

Honestly. It’s like listening to the breakfast show on Inane FM. “That was Carol with the traffic. Now it’s time for the little item we like to call ‘On This Day’! Did you know that on this day in 1972, The Osmonds topped the charts with Cootchy Cootchy Coo, and Herbert Pimple of Lower Wobbling in Hampshire became the first man in Britain to somersault over a hedge while dressed as a mongoose?”

Yesterday’s platitudes were about the 70th birthday of the NHS, and England beating Colombia on penalties at the World Cup.

Eventually, though, Mr Corbyn got around to his questions. Mrs May had probably expected him to attack her over tomorrow’s dreaded showdown with the Cabinet over Brexit. To her evident surprise, however, all his questions were about buses.

“Well, Mr Speaker,” said Scott Mann (Con, N Cornwall). “You wait ages for a question about buses, and then six come along at once.”