Britain’s new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn lived up to his campaign pledge of “a new kind of politics” by crowd-sourcing his first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.
Appearing opposite David Cameron for the first time at the despatch box, the Islington North MP told the Prime Minister many voters had told him PMQs – and parliament more generally – was “out of touch and too theatrical”.
He said an appeal to the public to tell Labour they would like to ask the PM had produced 40,000 responses, from which he had selected six to fill the questions traditionally given to the leader of the Opposition during the session.
One by one, he read out queries from Marie on housing, Steven on rents, Paul on tax credits, Claire on benefit thresholds and Gail and Angela on mental health.
Mr Cameron welcomed the change in tone, telling his new Labour adversary that “no one would be more delighted than me” if PMQs could become a “genuine exercise in asking questions and answering questions”.
He congratulated Mr Corbyn on his “resounding victory” and welcomed him to the front bench, adding: “I know we will have many strong disagreements, I’m sure, between us at these exchanges but where we can work together in the national interest we should do so and I wish him well in his job.”
Mr Corbyn thanked the PM for his commitment to answering questions “in a more adult way than it’s been done in the past”. But the Conservative leader did not entirely resist the opportunity to go on the attack, repeatedly warning that the high-quality public services which Mr Corbyn demanded would not be affordable without a strong economy.
“We will not have a strong NHS unless we have a strong economy, and if the Labour Party is going to go down the route of unlimited spending, unlimited borrowing, unlimited tax rates, printing money, they will wreck the economic security of our country and the security of every family in our country,” Mr Cameron told MPs.
Questions from Conservative backbenchers gave the prime minister the opportunity to highlight concerns about the left-wing policy platform on which Mr Corbyn won the Labour leadership.
When asked about defence, Mr Cameron said the cornerstone of the UK’s security was remaining a member of Nato, spending two per cent of GDP on the armed forces and keeping an independent nuclear deterrent.
“The fact the Labour Party are now turning away from those things is deeply regrettable,” he said. “National security is the most important thing a government can deliver and in this we will never fall short.”