"The Labour leader said he backed Speaker John Bercow's call to curb the "yobbery and public school twittishness" of PMQs to show that MPs can behave better than children."
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/02/23/pmq-miliband_n_4842707.html
It is all very noble and dare I say smacks slightly of spin, but has Miliband mentioned it to Ed Brawls.
Everytime I tune into PMQs, all I seem to be faced with is Ed Brawls gurning, growling and grimacing, hurling insults that I am fortunate enough not to be able to make out clearly amid the general maelstrom, and making West Coast gang-like signals with his hands as he tries to put off a good man, our Chancellor George Osborne, who is patiently trying to explain how he has delivered us from the mess that Ed Kool and the Gang got us into.
And as soon as that is over, Ed Miliband launches into attacks on a good man, our Prime Minister, David Cameron, and refers to him disrespectfully as the "dunce of Downing Street".
And it is bloody marvellous viewing. It is better than a night at Jongleurs as Ed expounds on the failings of the "comedians in the Cabinet". This necessarily elicits a reluctant response in a similar vein from our Prime Minister who is no longer able to restrain himself after having been so disrespectfully addressed and abused, and so the show goes on for another 30 exhilarating minutes.
At the end, Ed says we really must do something about the awful way in which the Tories behave and the Labour luvvies all say "hear hear" and ignore the Speaker who has shouted himself hoarse trying to rein them in and manitain order.
Marvellous! It's entertainment of the highest order and you don't even have to pay. No wonder tourists queue up to take a seat at the world famous weekly spectacle that is marvelled at across the planet and even up on Mars.
But now, some right-on Labour luvvies want to deprive the public of even this small pleasure and chink of light amidst the grey, blandness of our political class.
They want us to look us to them as "role models", as paragons of virtue and as "professionals". They think that that will re-engage us with politics and get us to turn out and vote for them again and make them less out-of-touch. But they are so out-of-touch that they don't understand that it is "professionals" that we don't want. We don't want "career politicians", trained spinners, on-message mediocrities and PPEa from Oxford who stepped on the elevator to internships, think tanks, publicly funded NGOs, Labour Party speech writers and then onto "professional" parachuted-in parliamentary candidates. We want a return to the old days of Aneurin Bevan et al - amateurs who cared and felt and meant what they said. Did the public vote for UKIP because UKIP are "professionals"? Get real and get in touch. Speak about what the people care about, stop spinning and behaving like professional cardboard cutouts who speak glibly forever and end up saying nothing meaningful at all.
If you look at the Hansard Society webpage and look at the staff and google for "conservative", it draws a blank. But then google "Labour" and you will see worked "at the Labour Party", or worked "for a Labour MP and Minister" etc.
If you want to change PMQs, you have to create pressure to do so otherwise there will be no justification for the change. You need surveys and focus groups. There is not much point "The Hansard Society" starting a petition because most of the public have never heard of the Hansard Society.
What are some of the changes that the Hansard Society suggests?
"The change in behaviour should be backed up by a new sin-bin penalty - naming a Member for disorderly conduct and removing them from the chamber -for use at the Speaker's discretion. The model of questioning should be varied to facilitate more discussion, pursuing genuine scrutiny and debate on a few topical areas rather than sole reliance on rapid-fire Q&As solely designed to trip participants up. The use of 'open' questions - where MPs can ask the Prime Minister about absolutely anything and he's expected to know the answer on the spot - should be reduced. Instead, there should be a return to some closed questions on subject-specific areas. The number of questions asked by the Leader of the Opposition should also be reduced in order to free up more time for questions from backbenchers. The public could be invited once a month to submit questions for consideration at PMQs. New technology means this could be done in simple and cost-effective ways."
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ruth-fox/pmqs-public-attitudes_b_4761030.html
Sin-bins - that sounds "professional". Treat the "professionals" like children, remove them from the chamber. What next? Put them on the naughty step, don't give them a star and revoke their right to attend the end of session House of Commons Disco?
"The use of 'open' questions - where MPs can ask the Prime Minister about absolutely anything and he's expected to know the answer on the spot - should be reduced"
But this will make it easier for the Prime Minister as he may no longer be shown to not be aware of some important issues.
"Instead, there should be a return to some closed questions on subject-specific areas."
i am not sure what "closed questions" are.
"The number of questions asked by the Leader of the Opposition should also be reduced in order to free up more time for questions from backbenchers"
But that is why we watch it - to see the Leader of the Opposition grill the PM and to see how competent both leaders are. Backbenchers whom the public don't recognise hold far less interest than the Leader of the Opposition. The number of questions asked by the Leader of the opposition should be increased, not decreased if the Prime Minister is to be held to account and grilled on important issues of the day.
"The public could be invited once a month to submit questions for consideration at PMQs."
Why only "once a month"? I would rather the Leader of the Opposition asked searching questions than questions "once a month" from members of the public, and who would choose which member of the public deserved to have their question asked or would it be drawn out of a hat?
Looking at the tweets of the Hansard Society and change.org it looks like this petition is already gaining tens of thousands of votes, so it will very likely be put on the political agenda.
I am sure it will win approval because Cameron will probably think it is a good idea. Watch it while you can, because they will probably eventually change it beyond recignition. It is historic, it is fantastic, it is unique. It will be such a shame to see it changed.
But it is good to see that there are still some real conservatives who don't think it is a good idea, like the fantastic Isabel Hardman
.
"I worked on a film for Newsnight this week in which I argued that the tribal, passionate atmosphere of PMQs was a sign of a healthy democracy – but there are some easy things both sides could do that would make the session much, much better. They don’t need to stop cheering and acting as though they’re at a football match: deferential politics is not a good thing. But backbenchers could, as a group, decide that they’re not going to take those ghastly questions from the whips that involve them asking a poorly-worded variation of ‘does my right honourable friend agree with me that he’s doing a fantastic job?’. Some MPs have, to their credit, tried to jazz them up: Alun Cairns has rewritten loyal questions to include references to curry and added his own jokes. But if MPs want more voters to think that parliamentarians spend this weekly session debating the issues that affect real people’s lives, they could at least use their one opportunity to quiz the Prime Minister as an opportunity to really quiz him, rather than just suck up to him.
There’s also no need for MPs to jeer one another when they stumble over questions (although quite often an MP who stumbles is doing so because they are reading a pre-written missive from the whips, rather than asking about something that affects their constituency, for instance).
These are just small changes, and some will argue that the whole nature of the session should change. Miliband was certainly hinting that he thought the structure of the Commons Chamber didn’t help matters in his Radio 4 interview. But the sort of consensual approach encouraged by circular chambers and group systems dilutes the ability of an opposition in checking the power of a governing party and holding it to account over hopeless reforms."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/02/ed-miliband-children-behave-better-than-mps-at-pmqs/
Is there a petition to keep it as it is? Let's hope someone cares enough about it to counter the "professional" approach.