Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
Press report it with their spin, BBC plays a clip with their spin, clips are pushed and circulate on social media. It has its place in the system, but the actual performance is pretty meaningless IMO - it's filleted and served up in whatever way suits a given audience.
Which makes the Express's report of today's PMQs 'quite interesting':
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/e...-PMQs-Boris-Johnson-keir-starmer-exams-brexit
'No matter. Starmer was not to be conned and simply repeated the question, in textbook barrister style, to highlight the fact the accused was indeed failing to come up with an answer.
The soundbites were easy and plentiful. Boris had a “tin ear” for criticism, this was the a “wasted Summer” of “serial incompetence” and the Labour leader even quoted one of Boris's own MP's as saying “it is mess after mess, god knows what's going on.”
Boris could only glare furiously from across the despatch box.
To give you some idea of just how rattled the Prime Minster was his ill-tempered response to Starmer's barbs was not jovial Boris knock-backs but a series of rambling and slightly incoherent accusations that the Labour leader was an EU-backing Remainer (true, but irrelevant) and that he was an IRA sympathiser.
It came across as desperate stuff. Starmer spent five years in Northern Ireland prosecuting high-ranking members of the IRA... a fact he studiously, if slightly over-gleefully, pointed out.'