Punch and Judy Politics

"Punch and Judy Politics is a really brilliant and interesting insight into a bit of politics that I think most people in Britain immediately recognise: Prime Minister’s Question Time, or PMQs. It was written by Ayesha Hazarika and Tom Hamilton, both of whom advised and prepared various Labour leaders for PMQs. It’s based not only on their own experiences, but also interviews with almost everyone who’s been involved in either doing it or preparing someone else to do it, from both the perspective of being in government and in opposition. It’s also a history of how PMQs developed originally, from something to help the then 80-something William Gladstone get through his day, so that he could know that questions would happen at one time. Originally, anyone in parliament could just get up at any time. From that, it developed into the much more stylised and formal session we know today. “To be honest, I used to think of PMQs as a massive and wholly depressing waste of time” This political book really surprised me. Speaking candidly, when I first read it, I did so because I knew Tom and Ayesha and they asked me to. I expected to have to be polite about it. But I genuinely really loved it. It really changed how I thought about PMQs, which, to be honest, I used to think of as a massive and wholly depressing waste of time. I mean, often it is both of those things. But it really changed how I think about its value, and what it reveals about the two people involved in it at any given time. It really illuminates not just that famous half hour of politics, but so much about why political parties make the decisions they do, political strategy more generally. I think about it, not just every week when PMQs is on, I think about it almost all the time when I write about why political parties do and say the things they do and say. If you want to read one book to really get your head around how political parties work and plan, it would be Punch and Judy Politics . The problem with PMQs is the incentive for people to stand up and congratulate the prime minister on what a wonderful job she’s doing, the kind of ‘let’s chuck our pre-prepared soundbites at one another’ routine. But the thing you realise through this book is that PMQs has two really important functions. The first is that it is the device by which the rest of government is accountable to Downing Street and the prime minister, because the prime minister is the person who’s going to have to stand up for half an hour and answer questions about anything. So it actually has a very important function in terms of Whitehall’s accountability, as well as the accountability of the prime ministers themselves. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Obviously it is not, and I don’t think will ever be, an organ for proper accountability in the way that select committee hearings can be. But it is a really useful way for political parties to find out weaknesses and holes in their own strategy. If you can’t answer or ask a question on the NHS because your health spokesman has said something controversial, well, that’s going to be a problem in the election as well. So it’s both a canny way for political parties to work that out, and a really useful way for all of us who cover it to kind of get a sense of where they are weak and where they are strong, and what their strategies for avoiding weak spots will be. Of course, you can try to find those things out by asking people. But sometimes, the things that people who work in politics say they will do and the things they actually do are quite divergent. So, the approach they take in PMQs is often quite a useful yardstick to measure against that. I’m not sure which job I would least like to have in that interaction. The prime minister obviously has the weight of government behind them, but ultimately they are the one answering questions. But then, they are also the one who gets to go last, so they’re guaranteed the final word. The other side has got a stripped-down, much smaller staff with no Whitehall machine behind, though they do notionally get to set some of the terms. And although it doesn’t really matter in terms of the pattern of policy outside of Westminster, it’s hugely important within that world because it is so important to the morale of MPs, and helps them feel they feel that they are being led well and so on."

"I think the great thing about this book is that the two authors talk to virtually all of the living politicians who’ve taken part in PMQs. They talked to a lot of advisors and they were both advisors themselves to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. So, they had an almost ringside seat into all of it. I think they bring out the trials and tribulations that politicians go through. Ayesha Hazarika used to work for Ed Miliband and advised him on PMQs. She says he was almost a physical wreck before them, and David Cameron admits that he was more nervous about doing PMQs than anything else. It is political theatre. People say they don’t like the yahoo politics of PMQs. Of course they do. That’s why they tune in and watch it. You don’t get these kinds of audiences for anything that goes on in the US Senate or the House of Representatives or the German Bundestag. At times, the politicians do go over the top, and it’s maybe not particularly seemly. “I think the most important thing in any political book is that it is accessible to people who are not obsessed with politics” You can compare the scenes from PMQs now to the scenes in the House of Commons in the 18th century, where there was sometimes real violence. So political theatre has always been there, and it’s a good thing as it gets people interested. I think what Ayesha and Tom also do really well in this book is bring out the rawness of PMQs and the fact that it isn’t necessarily just there for an outside audience. The performance of the party leader is designed to unite their troops and make them feel better about their own party. Now, it doesn’t always work, but it is the ultimate in ‘Punch and Judy’ politics. We saw that recently when Rishi Sunak had a right old go at Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition, about the small boats . He basically said Keir Starmer is a friend of the people traffickers, which was a disgraceful thing to say, especially from a prime minister who we thought wasn’t going to do that Boris Johnson style. So, you often learn something about politicians from the way that they behave at PMQs, whether they’re the party leaders or the ones asking the questions."