‘Does the pantomime anger of PMQs help or hinder?’ – News & Star

THERE has been a noticeable gulf developing between MPs and voters over the past few decades, the responsibility for which I think lies overwhelmingly within British communities, be they real or virtual.

We recently witnessed this powerful social media influence on US politics, culminating in the 2020 Presidential election.

And we now see that spilling over into the fake news agenda in UK politics that lies behind the anti-mask, anti-vaccine campaigns and even through to outright denial that a disease that has killed over four million people worldwide is even real.

We need to detoxify our person to-person communications, whether that is in the pub or on social media.

But are MPs and the legitimate media also in part responsible?

Those of us who follow the political process know that MPs work closely across party divisions in Select Committees as well as in ad hoc groups beyond parliament. Most of the most progressive, helpful legislation that gets passed in the House of Commons now begins life via those cross-party contacts.

And yet the weekly ritual of Prime Ministers Questions dominates the airwaves every Wednesday and the newspapers the following day.

Common sense gets drowned out by noise, and proven cross-party relationships get parked at the door of the House for the half-hourly duration.

This is the impression of what being an MPs is about which gets repeated in the mainstream media, while the vast majority of what they do for the good of their constituents or just the common good rarely if ever sees the light of day.

Headlines dont do subtlety.

So what could the House of Commons itself do in response to these two murders and their underlying causes?

They could start by dialling down the pantomime anger that is Prime Ministers Questions. And the easiest way to do that would be to stop this weekly ritual.

After all, it does not have its roots in the Constitution, but rather dates from the 1960s when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was faced by Harold Wilson. Ted Heath, an unconfident speaker wasnevertheless Leader of the Opposition. Wilson spotted his opportunity to humiliate Heath, and from this tactic came the ritual of weekly Questions.

It rarely sheds any light or leads to any progress it is by its nature a Mexican Stand-off masquerading as cut-and-thrust debate.

The wider electorate has come to regard as the typical behaviour of MPs something that happens only rarely in reality.

If I were an MP, Id be convening an ad-hoc group of fellow MPs and lobbying for a Speakers' Conference to push for the abolition of Prime Ministers Questions, to be replaced by a more considered regular accounting to a Select Committee in which questioning would shift from partisan-based to one of seeking genuine accountability.

An important question right now should be what did Prime Ministers Questions ever achieve, and how much harm does it do?

Bill FinlayHayton, Aspatria

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'Does the pantomime anger of PMQs help or hinder?' - News & Star