PMQs in Review: How have the government and opposition fared in Corbyn's first year?

The strike of Twelve on Wednesdays heralds the beginning of PMQs, a contest it is hard to say that progressives have been winning over the past six years.

Since Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader last autumn, PMQs has had an extra layer of attention paid to it. After Corbyn offered a new politics, kinder and more reasonable, commentators wondered at how that could be translated to the hostile cauldron of PMQs.

On the whole the answer has been a barrage of criticism of Corbyn's performances opposite David Cameron. At the top of the list has been his apparent lack of aggression and persistence, that has been accused of letting Cameron's ministry off lightly. It has also been said that there has been a simple lack of professional preparedness (Hazarika, 2016).

Part of Corbyn's problem, at least initially, was an unfocussed approach, where each question would press on a different subject. While that approach allowed for the covering of more ground, it also meant that ground was covered more thinly - or occasionally not at all in the face of a persistently aggressive Cameron, who frequently turned the format upside down by firing questions of his own back.

Others who stepped up to lead PMQs received a warmer response from critics. David Cameron is considered almost universally to have PMQs firmly in his grasp and to hold a position of confident control over the proceedings that makes life difficult for any opponent - Ed Miliband just as much as Jeremy Corbyn.

Cameron's and Corbyn's deputies George Osborne and Angela Eagle also had chances to take on PMQs. Osborne comes from the same PMQs school as Cameron, so his confidence comes with little surprise. But Angela Eagle's turn standing in for Corbyn had to be considered within the context of Labour MPs dissatisfaction with Corbyn.

Angela Eagle herself was a competent performer. Yet she also received much better support from her own benches than Corbyn is often afforded, which can only have made life easier. It also clearly suited the Commons that Eagle also went back to the old bantering approach.

While some of Corbyn's difficulties might be put down to his own flaws, there where early innovations. The use of letters from members of the public to add a new dimension to a question, which might force the PM to answer more straightly - something much needed within the format.

And that format itself aught to carry some of the blame. The Prime Minister is under no real obligation to give straight and clear answers to questions and there is no arbiter of the factual accuracy, relevance or suitability of an answer. It is left to the questioner to persist - a privilege that only two MPs are afforded.

Could changes to the format help? First Minister's Questions at Holyrood adopted a new longer format this year, giving more time to press for detail, and all of its opposition party leaders get a chance to ask a couple of questions. But whether adapting to that format or more likely remaining within the current format, co-operation between opposition MPs to coordinate questions alone - to hit a consistent tone and plant follow ups - would at least go some way, in the short term, to forcing the PM to give more specific answers.

September, when the recess ends, will see the new Conservative leader Theresa May return for her second appearance - and presumably further ones - but it isn't yet settled who her opponent will be. Whoever prevails in the Labour leadership election has to look back seriously and methodically at Corbyn's first year as opposition leader.

Regardless of whether it has been the fault of Corbyn or not, the opposition has struggled to get its message out and PMQs is one of the few opportunities for free, unfiltered, media coverage. The next leader of the Labour Party, as effective leader of the opposition to the government, needs to have a clear answer to the question: How can we make best use of those six questions and thirty minutes?

PMQs isn't fit for purpose. But it is the symptom not the disease

Week after week, the noise at Prime Minister's Questions has gotten louder. The half hour sessions have been drowned in noise growing more inconsiderate, more deliberately vindictive, with each passing week. Having to listen to the Conservative benches braying, on live television, to drown out the questions of the opposition, can be an exercise in masochism.

It seems pretty obvious at first look that PMQs is broken. And yet, it fits so perfectly within the Westminster system. That in itself is a sign of a much deeper problem in the British political system.

The essential trouble with PMQs is that it fits in a little too perfectly with the adversarial political culture in the UK. The two sides, the government and opposition, line up opposite to one another to, supposedly, hold the government to account.

The trouble is that this polemic is bias refined, a subjective contest where the government holds one view and thinks it is right and the opposition holds another and thinks it is right. What follows is a sparring match between the unstoppable and the immovable.

That contest is perfectly fitted to the UK's us-versus-them, first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all politics. Two implacable foes, coming from fixed positions having arguments that by their nature cannot be resolved. The government will do what it will and the rest is theatre.

There is certainly am uncontestable need for the public to see, in the flesh, what it is that each side stands for, argued for, hopefully, eloquently - maybe even persuasively. Yet PMQs is one the very few public moments in which there is an opportunity to enforce upon the government - handed extraordinary power in the UK - some kind of accountability.

However, when you cross the two purposes, the party publicity exercise and holding the government to account, only one of them is ever going to win. Accountability is sunk beneath bravado, noise and petty point-scoring.

In Scotland there has been attempt to début a revised First Minister's questions, changing up the system to provide more time for a calmer session with more interrogation. But even that is limited in what it can achieve.

It cannot escape a political culture of fixed adversarial positions and that is expressed, at its worst, in an exercise that is not supposed to be 'political' being consumed by politics.

Ideally, the process of holding the government to account would be something akin to a committee hearing. The Prime Minister would be brought before them and have to give acceptable answers to fundamental questions: What is your government doing? From where does it derive the mandate for that action?

The government's reluctance to put PM David Cameron into the election debates suggests an immediate weakness to this particular alternative: Would the party political machine ever submit to the Prime Minister and the government being put so clearly on trial? Probably not.

Right now the European Union's democracy is under scrutiny. But Westminster's shortcoming shouldn't be swept under the rug. Winner-takes-all makes a mockery of political representation and the adversary system simply reinforces the alienation of citizens from their government - keeping the real business far from the vigilant eyes of those who would want answers to the difficult questions that could hold it to account.

Corbyn tries to give Labour a fresh start to the new year, but infighting and bitterness again sours efforts to take party forward

Corbyn's reshuffle ensures his own views are better represented in key posts and increases representation of women, but has been soured by more squabbling. Photograph: Jeremy Corbyn at CWU Manchester event in October 2015.

Ahead of the return of MPs to their work at Westminster on Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn set out to give the Labour Party a fresh start to 2016. In the light of the divisions in his shadow cabinet during his first few months, Corbyn sought to do this with a reshuffle of his team (Mason, 2016).

For progressives, whether supporters of either Corbyn or Labour's 'moderate' faction, or neither, a fresh start has to be considered a positive step. However, as seems to be becoming an unfortunate trend, the effort looks at risk of being buried beneath internal squabbling.

That would be a disappointing start for the Left in 2016. While some victories have been won by progressives in opposition, in only a very few months - like stopping the implementation of tax credit cuts and at least delaying the eventual onset of their affects (Stewart et al, 2015) - the Left still needs to rally and present an effective opposition in the year ahead.

Despite rumours and speculation, facts were scarce as Jeremy Corbyn set about the task of reshuffling Labour's shadow cabinet on Monday. The clearest consensus seemed to be that making too drastic of a change would be foolish (Kuenssberg, 2016), as it might be interpreted as the taking of revenge on some shadow cabinet members who had spoken out against the party line.

In the event, the reshuffle itself was small in scale (Perraudin, 2016) - although it took days to resolve itself, almost running over into Prime Minister's Questions. Only Michael Dugher and Pat McFadden were ousted from the portfolio's of Culture and Europe, respectively. Maria Eagle moved sideways to culture, replaced in the Defence portfolio by Emily Thornberry, with Pat Glass taking on the Europe brief - certainly increasing the representation of women on the Labour frontbench.

However, controversies have still arisen even from those small alterations. Labour's, now former, frontbencher Michael Dugher took to twitter and the media circuit to denounce Corbyn, claiming he had been sacked for being straight talking and honest (ITV, 2016). Other rumours circle as to why certain MPs were singled out, with words like disloyalty and incompetence being used, and other frontbench MPs have resigned (BBC, 2016; Sparrow, 2016).

To let the beginning of a new year be eaten by more infighting would be a tragic state of affairs for the Left. Some sort of symbolic break, even small, from the first few months could have been a positive move, establishing Labour on a new plateau. After three months in charge, while there had been difficulties and threats of splits, Labour had also, nonetheless, had some successes upon which to build such a position.

At the moment, Corbyn is the Left's most prominent leader - seen as a principled man, an idealist (White, 2016), and as a leader willing also to be an activist, out on the streets in support of a cause (Perraudin, 2016{2}). Corbyn won the Labour leadership election with a huge swell of public support, his party comfortably won the Oldham by-election, and they were also deeply involved in forcing the Chancellor to backdown over the implementation of cuts to tax credits.

Coming up in 2016 are local council, London Mayoral, Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament elections in the Spring, and potentially the EU referendum in the Summer, in all of which progressives need to present a strong and coherent message. There are also policies like the Conservative's Housing Bill that need to be properly scrutinised and opposed. Yet that can only be the case if progressives can come together and working constructively, side by side for the common good.

That means the Left, and in particular Labour, need to learn to play nicely with others - as the political system in the UK still gives too much power to one faction for any single opposition party to make much headway alone. The various groups in opposition need to start finding real ways of working together on common issues - particularly, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, but also with the progressive though nationalist groups like the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

A reset, and a fresh start, would have been nice for the Left. For now though, the best that the Left can hope for from Labour is that bridges begin to be rebuilt. The squabbling has to stop (Jones, 2016). Labour's MPs have to remember that their party is the largest on the Left and that the position comes with a responsibility to lead scrutiny of the government - a government that has shown itself to be far less than invulnerable. The time has come to focus on that battle rather than internal intrigues.