Chris Mason: Prime Minister's Questions is a brutal spectacle
- Published
When you read the memoirs of former prime ministers, they all tend to agree on one thing: PMQs is a bit of a nightmare.
The thing is, that is the point of it.
The brutality of accountability in a democracy.
This week, on what I'm going to call the brutal-o-meter, really was quite something for Rishi Sunak.
Much of Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning is ringfenced in the prime minister's diary for mugging up for PMQs.
Stats and info is dredged from every corner of Whitehall to attempt to provide the PM with the ballast to take on the incoming from all angles.
But events can conspire and coalesce to mean that even the most well-stocked file of info and intel at the prime minister's fingertips will only get them so far.
Today was one of those days for Mr Sunak.
"The only deliverable - which we are delivering at pace - is losing," one former minister confided to me afterwards.
The gloom has got gloomier for many Conservative MPs.
Marbles and migration were the backdrop for today's exchanges - but beyond that there is deep concern from Tory MPs at what they see as an absence of strategy from No10.
And there is widespread bafflement among Conservatives about the prime minister's decision to pick a public fight with Greece over the Elgin Marbles.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer claims Rishi Sunak has "lost his marbles" by cancelling a meeting with the Greek PM
"It wasn't my favourite PMQs," a cabinet minister tells me, with a healthy dash of understatement.
"Why on earth are we still banging on about bloody marbles?" says another senior Tory, who argues the party needs to be focusing on Labour's spending plans, not a 200-year-old disagreement with Athens.
"He is lousy at foreign affairs and would not have known the impact of such a snub," a former cabinet minister tells me. "Every meeting we have with the Greeks involves us taking the same lines. And they also have theirs," the MP adds - emphasising how long the UK and Greece have disagreed about the sculptures.
So, bemusement about the marbles.
And deep anger about migration.
Rishi Sunak leads a party transparently, publicly, obviously jittery about immigration.
Little wonder: a party that promised to reduce net migration has presided over it trebling.
"There is only one party that has lost control of the borders," Keir Starmer was able to crow, to obvious discomfort for Tory MPs.
One Conservative on the Right of the party said as they left the chamber: "I could barely believe what I was hearing. Keir Starmer was outflanking us to the right on immigration. And to be fair to him he absolutely nailed it. It just shows what a mess we're in."
And talking of Sir Keir, it felt like he was enjoying trying to play the role of a prime minister in waiting. He asked questions about migration, laced with observations about meeting the Greek prime minister.
For he had kept his meeting, as Rishi Sunak ditched his own.
And there were gags too from the Labour leader - prompting one reporter to ask his team afterwards if he had a new joke writer.
"No, we just have very rich material at the moment," his spokesman replied dryly.
Rishi Sunak won't want many more Wednesday lunchtimes like this one.
But unless his political prospects improve and improve quickly, there are likely to be more to come.