PMQs or Mudslinging?

14th April, 2010 by Webmaster

I have to say
that in the last few weeks PMQs has become very tiring. The format is becoming
almost identical every week:

Intro
David Cameron attempts to ask a
question/attack the Government
Gordon sweeps the question away by
attacking previous Conservative administrations/making reference to the current
party
Cameron attempts a comeback by
attacking the PM
…and so on.

This is not
what people expect from PMQs and it fares badly for the fragile state of UK
politics. It makes the leaders look even worse because we do not have
confidence that they will give us a decent answer without referring us to the
answer they gave to a previous question (a standard way of deflecting a
question in Parliament).

Close to an
election I want to hear what the parties views are about taking the country out
of this deep, dark hole of deficit; not about the looming shadows of Peter
Mandelson and Kenneth Clarke. I am not suggesting that there shouldn’t be any bruising
encounters in PMQs, just a restraint on the amount of mudslinging. Hopefully
PMQs will again one day be a time to ask the PM questions and actually get a
decent answer.

Niall is currently the leading political voice for Royal Holloway’s Student Radio Station, Insanity (www.insanityradio.com)

(picture courtesy of Flickr)