“I would say: for heaven’s sake man, go!” – Corbyn and PMQs

(David Cameron to Jeremy Corbyn, PMQs, 29 June, 2016)

How has Jeremy Corbyn changed Prime Minister’s Question Time? Professor Ralph Negrine and Dr Peter Bull analyse his first 12 months of PMQs as Leader of the Opposition.

David Cameron’s final PMQs on 13 July 2016 was not the usual event. The questions, though pointed, did not really spoil what was, for him, the final act: a Prime Minister on the Parliamentary stage and in front of the world media reprising for the last time his role as Prime Minister. That it is possible to describe the event in theatrical terms is not unusual. Prime Minister’s Questions has often been more theatre than anything else as Prime Ministers bat away questions from the opposition whilst, at the same time, rallying their troops behind them. To perform well – a phrase that itself requires close scrutiny – ensures securing one’s position and the confidence of one’s colleagues. The opposite is also true. Not performing well means, in effect, that you have failed not only to master the art of oratory but also the information and facts that would allow you to deflect the questions from the opposite sides.

But if the analogy of PMQs as theatre foregrounds the PM as the main player, the star of the show, there is always the risk that the show will be stolen by someone else. That someone is the Leader of the Opposition (LO). Part of the reason for this is that the LO also has star billing, albeit in slightly smaller fonts, and their role is to feed lines (questions) to the PM. The quality of those lines may either lead to a well-crafted and dismissive comment or bring about a badly phrased and confusing response. If one were point scoring – and PMQs is almost always about point scoring – the better the PM’s performance, the worse is that of the Opposition, and vice versa. Which is why PMQs is as much about the performance of the LO as that of the PM.

So, whilst PMQs is about Questions to the Prime Minister, in reality it is about much more. That is not to say that questions do not feature large: Cameron pointed out that he had been asked 5500 questions during his time as PM, although he did go on to quip that others would need to say how many of those were actually answered. Jeremy Corbyn, who sought and is still trying to change PMQs, asked 179 of these questions during his first 10 months as LO.

The problem for Corbyn, though, is twofold. The first is that the format of PMQs makes it difficult to avoid the theatricality of the event: the bear pit setting, the cut and thrust, the ‘Punch and Judy show’, the baying crowds, the waving papers, the shouting, the sparring nature of the exchanges. Critics of PMQs, and there are many, see it as nothing more than theatre and an occasion for much heat but little light. In this view, the media give it more importance than it deserves and television’s love affair with PMQs exacerbates the problem. It becomes a point of focus but empty of substance. Paradoxically, it is also the moment when the House is often at full capacity and quickly empties when the show is over.

The second problem is a variation on the first: seeking to change the discourse of PMQs will make no difference at all if the other performer in this event – the PM – will not play ball. Nevertheless, Corbyn has tried to make changes. In his first PMQs (16 September, 2015), Corbyn initiated a radical innovation. Each of his six questions was sourced from a member of the public, introduced as follows:

“I have taken part in many events around the country and had conversations with many people about what they thought about this place, our parliament, our democracy and our conduct within this place. Many told me they thought prime minister’s question time was too theatrical, that parliament was out of touch and too theatrical and that they wanted things done differently, but above all they wanted their voice heard in parliament.”

“So I thought in my first prime minister’s question time I would do it in a slightly different way and I am sure the prime minister is going to absolutely welcome this as he welcomed this idea in 2005. But something seems to have happened to his memory during that period.”

Image courtesy of David Holt via Flickr

Corbyn’s new approach to PMQs was evaluated in a paper presented to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society (28 April 2016) by Peter Bull, Anita Fetzer and Maurice Waddle. They analysed Corbyn’s first 20 PMQs (up to 3 April, 2016, 120 questions), and found that in every session Corbyn included at least one question sourced from a member of the public.

To test the impact of this new approach, questions sourced from members of the public (public questions) were compared with those not sourced from members of the public (non-public questions). The authors used two measures of impact: reply rates and personalisations.

1. Reply rate refers to the proportion of questions that receive a direct reply. The results showed no statistically significant difference between public and non-public questions. The reply rate for public questions was 23%, for non-public questions 20%. By way of comparison, analyses of televised political interviews have shown a reply rate of 46% (based on 33 interviews, Bull 2003).
2. Personalisations refer to disrespectful comments directed at another politician rather than addressing the topic under discussion, figuratively referred to as “playing the man rather than the ball” (Waddle & Bull, 2015). So, for example, Cameron in one of his responses imagined his mother saying to Corbyn: “Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem” (PMQs 24 February, 2016). Over all 120 questions, it was found that Cameron used significantly more personalisations than Corbyn (27% as opposed to 15%, n=120, p<.05). However, his use of personalisations dropped to 19% in response to the 31 public questions, which did not differ significantly from Corbyn (16%). In contrast, the difference for the 89 non-public questions was significant – Cameron (29%), Corbyn (15%) (p.<05).

If Corbyn’s new approach seems to have made PMQs less adversarial and more dialogic, it has also invited jeers and derision from his critics and detractors, even from his own side.  Most recently, Corbyn’s leadership challenger, Owen Smith, was reportedly “furious“ at Corbyn’s poor performance at Theresa May’s first PMQs (20 July, 2016). John Mcternan, in The Daily Telegraph, reported that May had used Corbyn, “as a punching bag.”

All this merely leads to the question: is it really possible to change the discourse of PMQs? Figuratively, it may be likened to a form of verbal pugilism, conducted under arcane conventions resembling the Queensbury rules of boxing. Although Jeremy Corbyn denies that he is a pacifist, he is no boxer, and his pacific approach seems to cut little ice amongst his fellow MPs. If MPs clearly perceive that the main role of the political opposition is to oppose, then the reputation of the LO would seem to stand or fall by his skill as an effective adversary.

Biographies

Ralph Negrine is Professor of Political Communication in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield. He has researched and published extensively in the field of political communication over the last two decades. Ralph’s most recent work has explored the theme of ‘professionalisation’ in political communication and the extent to which the changes in the communications strategies of governments, political organisations and other political groups can be seen as part of a process of ‘professionalisation’ or as part of other forces at play in society at large. These are themes that Ralph has written on and they form the main connecting thread of his book The Transformation of Political Communication (Palgrave Macmillan 2008). A part of this study is devoted to changes in the nature and forms of political communication, particularly in the nature and form of party election broadcasts (PEBs). Ralph has created a website which contains examples of early British election broadcasts. Ralph is now engaged in two research projects. One is a study of the television coverage of the ‘expenses scandal’ in Britain in 2009, the other a study of Jewish migration to Israel from Arab lands in the years 1949 to 1957. He is a member of the Core Research Team on the Designing for Democracy project.

Peter Bull is a Reader in the Department of Psychology at the University of York. His principal interest is the detailed “microanalysis” of interpersonal communication, in particular nonverbal communication and political discourse; he also has interests in the social psychology of health.

References

Bull, P. (2003). The Microanalysis of Political Communication: Claptrap and Ambiguity.  London: Psychology Press.

Bull, P. Fetzer, A. & Waddle, M. (2016). “I quote and I am not making this up”: the role of quotations in the adversarial discourse of Prime Minister’s Questions. Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham, 28 April 2016.

 Note: this article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Crick Centre, or the Understanding Politics blog series. To write for the Understanding Politics blog series please contact crick@sheffield.ac.uk

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