Much of the hubbub is there to compensate for reduced ideological differences among MPs but there is another reason
Ed Miliband is again saying that he wants to make prime minister's question time less shouty and confrontational. We know that David Cameron regrets the "Punch and Judy" character of the occasion. The pair meet again at noon for their weekly Wednesday showdown. Are we holding our breath? No.
At the weekend the Labour leader said the problem is "easier to state, harder to execute". David Cameron has made that discovery too but also finds it easier to punch below the belt when he gets hot and flustered. Their backbenchers egg them on like football fans.
What has gone wrong? I have a theory. PMQs used to be so gentle a century ago, as I once explored here, but has evolved to fit changing times. The exchange was formalised as a twice-weekly 15-minute session on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 3.15 as recently as 1961, unilaterally consolidated into a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays at noon by Tony Blair in the wake of his 1997 landslide.
It saved Blair a lot of prep work, having to learn the problems in departments across Whitehall. Although for Margaret Thatcher it was a usual habit, which she exploited with her usual energetic eye for detail. Woe betide a minister whose briefing notes were judged inadequate. But Blair's move also reduced accountability, though he denied it.
The move was typical of his ignorance of and disdain for tradition and the machinery of government, as some of us protested at the time. But in fairness to Blair – someone has to try – the rot had long since set in. It was Harold Wilson, opposition leader in the scandal-hit twilight Tory years of 1963-64, who realised how his quick mind and wit could be used PMQs to undermine old school PM, Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
There was no radio or TV feed then. But word got around and helped Wilson win, albeit narrowly, in 1964. As PM (1976-79) Jim Callaghan used his vast experience to patronise Thatcher rather well. But he lost and she soon acquired ascendancy. The next PM-in-waiting to make it a bully pulpit was Blair himself. He abused John Major (1994-7) in ways decent Major has not forgiven. He's a good hater.
In the interval first radio, then TV, arrived raising the stakes. Rolling news channels with space to fill made PMQs more gladiatorial still. Social media piled on the pressure – I sometimes Tweet the event myself. Shame!
It was always a partisan occasion in my experience of watching it on and off for nearly 40 years now. But it's got worse at a time when it shouldn't have done so. Why not? Because the great mid-century ideological battles between socialism and capitalism (well into the 70s lots of sensible people thought Soviet Russia had cracked it) have largely been settled in capitalism's favour. The issues now are managerial and regulatory – how to save markets from their own built-in propensity to blow up.
At the same time the newly elected 2010 parliament represented a bigger break with the past than any in modern times – 227 MPs, or one-third of the 650 total, were new members.
They were determined to raise parliament's game after decades of over-mighty governments with impregnable majorities, not to mention expunge the expenses shame.
More women (22%), more ethnic minority MPs (4%), slightly younger and (so we all agreed) of better quality on both sides. Yet they are now the bellowing chorus which polls report that voters find distasteful. Why so?
My theory is twofold. One that the noise is there to compensate for reduced ideological difference. Yes, Iain Duncan Smith is attacking the benefits system in ways that Labour's Rachel Reeves would not. But no one doubts that a Miliband government would have to make tough choices too. Even Ed Balls said so again this week. We live in a world where technocratic elites make most choices – good and bad – on our behalf until they stumble and get kicked out.
Secondly, I suspect the villain of the piece is another Labour reform, so-called "family friendly hours", coupled with the coalition's inability and/or reluctance to keep the Commons busy with legislation in the collective arena of the chamber itself. Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do, but only on Wednesdays at noon – the one moment when the chamber is certain to be full.
Family-friendly hours? As the Commons leader from 2001 to 2003 Robin Cook, not famously family-friendly in his private life, pushed through reforms which finally shifted sitting time decisively towards daylight hours. Select committees can meet at 9.30, the house sits at the same time on Thursdays – not to push through more debate and bills, but to allow MPs to get back to their demanding constituencies on Thursday evenings.
There are pluses in all this; fewer MPs actually die in office these days, that's why there are so few byelections. There are virtually no late-night sittings except – paradoxically – in the elderly, unelected Lords.
MPs are less tired, they have more time to hold ministers or bankers to account effectively in their committees. Some are good at it (not all, I realise). Speaker Bercow deserves credit he rarely gets for modernising reforms and forcing ministers to justify themselves to backbenchers.
But the loss is there too. And one loss is a sense of collegiate identity as parliamentarians in a non-party sense. In daylight hours MPs are usually busy and at night they no longer hang around. The great Palace of Westminster can be eerily deserted by 8 o'clock (except at the Lords end), as it never used to be.
Eating or drinking together, chatting and exchanging ideas is important in any organisation. That's why those major Silicon Valley tech firms locate the loos in their fancy new offices in places which force their clever staff to pass each other's desks and even talk on the way for a pee.
"Face time" remains a critical form of engagement, it now seems to be agreed. But from what I hear from old hands at Westminster it doesn't happen enough among them now: everyone is too busy trying to be busy even though the legislative programme is notably light because the coalition partners can't agree what to do.
A good thing too, you may say. But polarisation is bad for us all, as the US Congress constantly shows. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan laments in his memoirs about the fact that Democrats and Republicans no longer attend each other's parties and children's weddings, as they did in his youth in Washington of the Ford era (1974-77). It makes the give-and-take compromises so necessary to politics harder to achieve.
Westminster does not yet have a Tea Party problem to compound the difficulty, though plenty of pretty simplistic rightwingers see the state as an enemy, the British state as well as Brussels. Their sense of righteous isolation is probably enhanced by the new arrangements and lack of collegiate spirit.
So when they all meet together for PMQs (I get the impression that attendance at departmental question time is slipping) it's the one big occasion of the week – like Saturday football. They bellow for their own side.
Miliband understands the importance of Britain's adversarial style of political debate, which springs from the law courts. But he also likes to quote Barack Obama as saying""You can disagree without being disagreeable."
Fine, but Obama is not a good role model. He does not schmooze with his Congressional friends, let alone the Republican opposition whose acquiescence he needs to get things done.
He's a cool customer, who does not share drinks or slap backs easily. Obama doesn't do collegiate and it's a weakness. Come to think of it, the same charge is levelled against Cameron as a posh boy comfortable only with fellow-Etonians, not sharing baked beans in the MPs' cafeteria as Mrs T used to do (a bit). And Miliband too; he stands charged – "what's all this one nation stuff?" MPs ask – with being an out-of-touch Tufnell Park intellectual.
That's the trouble with PMQs, the hubbub is phoney, evidence of a compensating enthusiasm for their party leaders which MPs do not really feel. They feel lonely.
Is our hyper-critical 24/7 political culture creating robotic leaders, merely tough enough to withstand the heat and always too busy to talk? Are those bellowing backbenchers really saying: "Hey there, leader. I'm here. Talk to me"?
Everyone needs to be loved. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.
Ed Miliband is again saying that he wants to make prime minister's question time less shouty and confrontational. We know that David Cameron regrets the "Punch and Judy" character of the occasion. The pair meet again at noon for their weekly Wednesday showdown. Are we holding our breath? No.
At the weekend the Labour leader said the problem is "easier to state, harder to execute". David Cameron has made that discovery too but also finds it easier to punch below the belt when he gets hot and flustered. Their backbenchers egg them on like football fans.
What has gone wrong? I have a theory. PMQs used to be so gentle a century ago, as I once explored here, but has evolved to fit changing times. The exchange was formalised as a twice-weekly 15-minute session on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 3.15 as recently as 1961, unilaterally consolidated into a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays at noon by Tony Blair in the wake of his 1997 landslide.
It saved Blair a lot of prep work, having to learn the problems in departments across Whitehall. Although for Margaret Thatcher it was a usual habit, which she exploited with her usual energetic eye for detail. Woe betide a minister whose briefing notes were judged inadequate. But Blair's move also reduced accountability, though he denied it.
The move was typical of his ignorance of and disdain for tradition and the machinery of government, as some of us protested at the time. But in fairness to Blair – someone has to try – the rot had long since set in. It was Harold Wilson, opposition leader in the scandal-hit twilight Tory years of 1963-64, who realised how his quick mind and wit could be used PMQs to undermine old school PM, Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
There was no radio or TV feed then. But word got around and helped Wilson win, albeit narrowly, in 1964. As PM (1976-79) Jim Callaghan used his vast experience to patronise Thatcher rather well. But he lost and she soon acquired ascendancy. The next PM-in-waiting to make it a bully pulpit was Blair himself. He abused John Major (1994-7) in ways decent Major has not forgiven. He's a good hater.
In the interval first radio, then TV, arrived raising the stakes. Rolling news channels with space to fill made PMQs more gladiatorial still. Social media piled on the pressure – I sometimes Tweet the event myself. Shame!
It was always a partisan occasion in my experience of watching it on and off for nearly 40 years now. But it's got worse at a time when it shouldn't have done so. Why not? Because the great mid-century ideological battles between socialism and capitalism (well into the 70s lots of sensible people thought Soviet Russia had cracked it) have largely been settled in capitalism's favour. The issues now are managerial and regulatory – how to save markets from their own built-in propensity to blow up.
At the same time the newly elected 2010 parliament represented a bigger break with the past than any in modern times – 227 MPs, or one-third of the 650 total, were new members.
They were determined to raise parliament's game after decades of over-mighty governments with impregnable majorities, not to mention expunge the expenses shame.
More women (22%), more ethnic minority MPs (4%), slightly younger and (so we all agreed) of better quality on both sides. Yet they are now the bellowing chorus which polls report that voters find distasteful. Why so?
My theory is twofold. One that the noise is there to compensate for reduced ideological difference. Yes, Iain Duncan Smith is attacking the benefits system in ways that Labour's Rachel Reeves would not. But no one doubts that a Miliband government would have to make tough choices too. Even Ed Balls said so again this week. We live in a world where technocratic elites make most choices – good and bad – on our behalf until they stumble and get kicked out.
Secondly, I suspect the villain of the piece is another Labour reform, so-called "family friendly hours", coupled with the coalition's inability and/or reluctance to keep the Commons busy with legislation in the collective arena of the chamber itself. Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do, but only on Wednesdays at noon – the one moment when the chamber is certain to be full.
Family-friendly hours? As the Commons leader from 2001 to 2003 Robin Cook, not famously family-friendly in his private life, pushed through reforms which finally shifted sitting time decisively towards daylight hours. Select committees can meet at 9.30, the house sits at the same time on Thursdays – not to push through more debate and bills, but to allow MPs to get back to their demanding constituencies on Thursday evenings.
There are pluses in all this; fewer MPs actually die in office these days, that's why there are so few byelections. There are virtually no late-night sittings except – paradoxically – in the elderly, unelected Lords.
MPs are less tired, they have more time to hold ministers or bankers to account effectively in their committees. Some are good at it (not all, I realise). Speaker Bercow deserves credit he rarely gets for modernising reforms and forcing ministers to justify themselves to backbenchers.
But the loss is there too. And one loss is a sense of collegiate identity as parliamentarians in a non-party sense. In daylight hours MPs are usually busy and at night they no longer hang around. The great Palace of Westminster can be eerily deserted by 8 o'clock (except at the Lords end), as it never used to be.
Eating or drinking together, chatting and exchanging ideas is important in any organisation. That's why those major Silicon Valley tech firms locate the loos in their fancy new offices in places which force their clever staff to pass each other's desks and even talk on the way for a pee.
"Face time" remains a critical form of engagement, it now seems to be agreed. But from what I hear from old hands at Westminster it doesn't happen enough among them now: everyone is too busy trying to be busy even though the legislative programme is notably light because the coalition partners can't agree what to do.
A good thing too, you may say. But polarisation is bad for us all, as the US Congress constantly shows. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan laments in his memoirs about the fact that Democrats and Republicans no longer attend each other's parties and children's weddings, as they did in his youth in Washington of the Ford era (1974-77). It makes the give-and-take compromises so necessary to politics harder to achieve.
Westminster does not yet have a Tea Party problem to compound the difficulty, though plenty of pretty simplistic rightwingers see the state as an enemy, the British state as well as Brussels. Their sense of righteous isolation is probably enhanced by the new arrangements and lack of collegiate spirit.
So when they all meet together for PMQs (I get the impression that attendance at departmental question time is slipping) it's the one big occasion of the week – like Saturday football. They bellow for their own side.
Miliband understands the importance of Britain's adversarial style of political debate, which springs from the law courts. But he also likes to quote Barack Obama as saying""You can disagree without being disagreeable."
Fine, but Obama is not a good role model. He does not schmooze with his Congressional friends, let alone the Republican opposition whose acquiescence he needs to get things done.
He's a cool customer, who does not share drinks or slap backs easily. Obama doesn't do collegiate and it's a weakness. Come to think of it, the same charge is levelled against Cameron as a posh boy comfortable only with fellow-Etonians, not sharing baked beans in the MPs' cafeteria as Mrs T used to do (a bit). And Miliband too; he stands charged – "what's all this one nation stuff?" MPs ask – with being an out-of-touch Tufnell Park intellectual.
That's the trouble with PMQs, the hubbub is phoney, evidence of a compensating enthusiasm for their party leaders which MPs do not really feel. They feel lonely.
Is our hyper-critical 24/7 political culture creating robotic leaders, merely tough enough to withstand the heat and always too busy to talk? Are those bellowing backbenchers really saying: "Hey there, leader. I'm here. Talk to me"?
Everyone needs to be loved. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.