Hostile or Consensual?: A Comparative Study of Personal Attacks and Positive Self-Reference in Exchanges between the Conservatives and SNP in PMQs and FMQs

Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs) have been the subject of considerable attention in scholarly debates in recent years. However, First Minister Questions (FMQs) in devolved administrations, such as Wales and Scotland, have yet to be systematically investigated to the same extent. This research project focuses on comparative levels of hostility between: a) the Scottish First Minister and the Conservative leader in the Scottish Parliament; and b) the Prime Minister and the leader of the SNP in Westminster. To date, it has been unclear whether the divergent institutional and political contexts have an impact upon the level of hostility during those question times. We analysed exchanges using transcripts of ten sessions of each, PMQs and FMQs, before and ten sessions during the COVID outbreak to see whether the pandemic had a similar impact on both exchanges. For this, we applied and adjusted a coding schedule derived from Waddle, Bull and Böhnke (2019). Our findings indicate that exchanges in FMQs are less hostile and that the COVID outbreak impacted exchanges in Westminster differently than in Holyrood. While both exchanges were significantly less aggressive during COVID, the magnitude of the lack of hostility is still noticeably different in the Scottish Parliament. The results of this study are useful for three main reasons: 1) they address in part a gap in the literature on FMQs; 2) the comparative nature of the research contributes to the debate on whether politics at Holyrood is more consensual; and 3) the pre and post design permits a comparative assessment of the impact of crises upon legislative behaviour.