I’ve written about Prime Ministers Questions more than once before.
It’s a feature of parliamentary systems, where once a week, or twice a week as it was in the UK until 1997, a parliament will ask of the Prime Minister important questions. In theory, anyway. As often as not, MPs of the Prime Minister’s party will ask planted questions, questions they’ve been given by the PM’s office along the lines of “Does the Prime Minister agree with me that the Opposition smells?” Or “Does the Prime Minister agree that the government’s economic policy is necessary to repair the damage done by the last government?”
And it long ceased to be a way for the Leader of the Opposition to actually hold the Prime Minister to account for their government’s policies. Its’ arguable whether it ever was. (Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning for ages to pick up a copy of Punch and Judy Politics: An Insiders’ Guide to Prime Minister’s Questions by Ayesha Hazarika and Tom Hamilton. I should do that.)
In the UK, when parliament is in session, PMQs takes place on a Wednesday. And for most of them, the past eighteen months, I’ve live–tweeted them as they’ve occurred. (Links there to the first question asked by the Leader of the Opposition in half a dozen different examples.) I’ll usually append The occasional editorial comment, sure, but mainly it’s just letting people know what the various politicians have asked, and what the PM has answered.
As you may have noticed, however, Parliament has been prorogued, but as of this morning, that prorogation has now – by a Scottish Court – been ruled unlawful. It’ll be decided at the UK’s Supreme Court next Tuesday. (It’s open to the public, but since I don’t want to have to start queuing at 5am in order to get a seat in the public gallery, I’ll watch the stream from the comfort of my own couch…)
But when I heard the news about the judgment, my reaction was as follows:
And I meant it as no more than that, a quick gag.
And then I thought why not? Why not live tweet the PMQs we should be having. And have a bit of fun doing so?
Well, why not indeed.
So I live tweeted the Prime Minister’s Questions that never occurred, but should have.
Enjoy.
(The entire thread, on twitter, commences with the tweet above, but since reposting the tweets themselves by linkage means I get double and triple references to the tweets, here are snaps of the tweets in the thread.)
Anyways, that was fun. Something else tomorrow…
budgie's perch 