Prime Minister's Questions
Schoolboys hurl insults at each other with the messiness and inaccuracy of mudslinging. A racecourse commentator speaks tinnily from a 1950s radio box. Cheers of football fans fill the hall as they “hear hear” with the speaker. This is our raucous UK parliament. It is mesmerising and hilarious. It is cringeworthy and disappointing. Above all, it is incredible to be able to watch, no matter where you’re from, as the Prime Minister gets grilled and celebrated every Wednesday at 12pm in the Palace of Westminster during Prime Minister’s Questions.
PMQs sessions were established officially in 1961, but the tradition of publicly answering questions from other parliamentarians goes back centuries. British residents can book tickets if they write to their Members of Parliament. If, like me, your MP is the Member for Westminster, good luck ever hearing from them. I didn’t despair however, because anyone can show up on the day and get a last-minute seat. A queue officially begins at 10.30am, but in traditionally British fashion, people queue for the queue. I got myself to parliament by 10am to guarantee my spot.
Even the queue for PMQs is an experience. A Chinese International Relations student arrived at the same time as me, and when I asked her what she wanted to do with her degree, she replied bluntly – “I want to be rich”. A French teacher had travelled from Paris for the day, just to see democracy in action. An English pair got chatting to me about a variety of policy ideas, suggesting we make all public transport free and abolish all the political parties.
Walking into parliament itself, the vast building unfurls itself before you. Plaques indicate the places of bizarre forgiveness and condemnation. They mark the spot where Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal, was acquitted after being impeached for corruption and misgovernance in India in the 1700s. A few paces ahead is where the Catholic, ‘treasonous’ Sir Thomas More received his death sentence after defying Henry VIII when he divorced his first wife. The stained-glass windows in the grand hall ominously glitter as their light pulls you up the stairs.
Turning left into the waiting area, St Stephen’s Hall, illustrious statues of men loom over the hallway, separated by stunning paintings of diplomatic missions. A gorgeous portrait of the British approaching a Mughal emperor on England’s first trade mission hangs next to a statue of Lord Chatham, William Pitt. The legendary foreign policy think-tank, Chatham House, bears his name, and he was an advocate of prosecuting the aforementioned Warren Hastings.
Finally they call us in. We hand our phones and bags to security, settle into our seats in the gallery, and the spectacle begins.
As we sit down, the man with the floor boldly proclaims that “I can assure you this government and this party are committed to integrity”. Cackles of laughter ring around the room, like witches casting spells around a cauldron. This isn’t even the main act. This is question time about Wales.
Rishi Sunak arrives, with his posse behind him, Jeremy Hunt and Penny Mordaunt. He raises his eyebrows mischievously at some chums in the front row. Then, the room stills and he and his teammates move to sit down, walking across the bench to cheers like a football team trotting onto the pitch. I almost expect the backbenchers to erupt into a Mexican wave.
The football match jeers are the most striking thing about PMQs. Drop mics in the gallery transmit everything from the floor through a speaker, but when someone is speaking, it sounds like the correspondence from a horse-racing derby. The reactions from the crowd are heavily exaggerated, with cheering, booing and finger-wagging that feels out of place in the room where our elected officials decide the future of our country.
People bob up and down, indicating they want to ask questions. But there is a list, the questions already planted. The speaker, in his green leather throne, points at the first questioner, like a game show host picking out the winner of a prize.
PMQs is a beautiful melting pot of British accents, like the dining table at Hogwarts. I can’t see the first questioner, but her Scottish lilt pops the image of Cho Chang into my head as she asks about youth vaping. Another woman manages to lump the Rwanda Bill and military spending together to denounce the Labour party for not supporting either, providing a lay-up for the Prime Minister to agree.
Then it’s time for Keir Starmer to speak. The leader of the opposition. He steps up to the central table, like a lightweight challenger stepping into the ring, applause rippling around him as he basks in it. He gloats that not one but two Conservative MPs have defected to the Labour party in the last two weeks.
This is the end of the serious fighting however. Far from a boxing match, neither wants to throw a proper punch, nor take a hit to the face. It’s fun to watch, but nothing lands, nothing really hurts. It’s more like watching schoolboys play. After some barbs about Keir being a hoity-toity lawyer and Rishi’s innumerable homes, Rishi makes the mistake of asking Keir a question. The funniest moment of the session is when he replies that the prime minister was “getting ahead of himself asking [Keir] questions” and implies this is good practice for when Keir is anticipating to take office later this year.
After these two stop sparring, the mood becomes more serious and sombre. The questions are designed either to plump up the party in power, or challenge them. A vast array of topics are covered, from the innocuous (e.g. a football teams upgrading to the Premier League à la Ted Lasso) to the table stakes (e.g. the security of accepting investment from China in the wake of a recent hack). We cover allergy deaths in schools, water and sewage treatment, crumbling hospitals, national insurance, the “war on motorists”, the actual war in Gaza, the migrant crisis, among other topics. A dizzying array of issues that represent just a fraction of the preoccupations of the British voter are brought to the fore. But there is no discussion. Sunak bats away each one with a well-prepared answer, designed to make the government look good.
We run over time, but finally the Speaker stops calling on new questioners. At 12.36pm the session is adjourned and the full room empties out. Another matter is due to be discussed, though only twenty or so parliamentarians remain.
I asked a French woman what she thought of the grand performance as we were walking out. She said “they didn’t really say anything. Nothing really happened.” In one sense, I agree. The PMQs feel like political point-scoring at best, and tribalist or childish at worst. But I still think they’re important.
Anyone, from anywhere, can come and watch the Prime Minister be interrogated. This matters in a democracy with the UK’s profile, which is still one of the five members of the security council, and a close ally of the US. It is a reminder of the accountability of politicians, in a world where so many aren’t accountable or even visible. It’s not perfect, and it sometimes feels very broken, but it is powerful to be in the room and see democracy at work.