Civility and Incivility at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the British House of Commons

In the United Kingdom, PMQs is a weekly 30-minute parliamentary session, in which the Prime Minister (PM) responds to questions from both government and opposition Members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are expected to converse through questions and replies, while refraining from “unparliamentary language” (e.g., calling another MP a liar). However, within these constraints, PMQs is notorious for its adversarial discourse, characterized by personal attacks and political point scoring. A significant departure from PMQ adversarialism was the introduction by Jeremy Corbyn (the current Leader of the Opposition [LO]), of questions sourced from members of the public (referred to as public questions). Seemingly, Corbyn’s aim was to foster less incivility in PMQs and a greater focus on substantive political issues, and in this respect he was partially successful. Thus, Corbyn received significantly fewer personal attacks from David Cameron (the then PM) in response to public questions than non-public questions (19% cf. 29% of Cameron’s speaking turns). Nevertheless, Corbyn was also extensively criticised for poor performance at PMQs, and mocked in particular for his use of public questions. Notably, in his most recent PMQ interactions with the new PM (Theresa May), Corbyn has stopped this practice, and reverted to a more traditional adversarial style. From this perspective, it would appear that incivility in PMQs is hard to change. Seemingly, its adversarial discourse is not just acceptable, but normative, sanctioned and rewarded - a means whereby MPs (in particular both PM and LO) seek to maintain and enhance their own political status through personal attacks and aggressive political point scoring.