Prime Minister's Questions - get there early to get a seat!

Noon on a Wednesday is the highlight of the Parliamentary week – and such is its popularity, seats go early. Addicts to this ritual reserve their spaces (usually in line with the cameras!) arriving early in the morning. The rest of us sidle in around 15 minutes before curtain up which means listening to the previous debate. This time it was ‘Oral Questions to the Duchy of Lancaster’ which in English means questions connected to the Cabinet Office and voluntary sector. By 11.45hrs however the chamber was already full to bursting and sounded like a buzzing coffee shop.

Everyone was engrossed in private discussion whilst waiting for the big beasts to enter the arena. I paused to absorb some of the conversations around me which included voting intentions on the soon to be debated ‘ban smacking of children amendment’ to ‘I haven’t seen John [name changed to protect the innocent] for a while, he has been unwell - hope it’s not another by-election looming!’.

The din increased to such a volume that eventually the Speaker intervened. “There are too many private conversations taking place - let the Minister be heard!” we all replied “Hear Hear” pretending it was someone else. The chatter stopped for 20 seconds and then quickly returned to its original level.

Noon at last and the session began. It soon became apparent that the shadow of the global economic crisis would mean only the economy was to be discussed – and as we have promised to work with Labour on managing the crisis, David Cameron played a straight bat.

This suited Gordon Brown, who proceeded to answer each question in the most convoluted way as he revealed the ‘secret plan’ to save the economy - which John Humphreys had already told us about this morning.

Consensus politics was the order of the day resulting in an understandably muted PMQs.