//If only yesterday had brought some competent generalship. Instead we had a doddery Jeremy Corbyn trying to ask Mrs May about the collapse of Carillion, that private company given multiple millions to fulfil certain state-paid services.
Mr Corbyn did not seem entirely on top of the capitalist details. He said the Government should have done more to ‘manage’ Carillion. Mrs May said that, er, the whole point of hiring outside companies was that the Government was a customer, not a manager, and was therefore not in the frame for bailing out a private company. Mr Corbyn countered that the Government should have walked away from Carillion once it offered a profits warning. Mrs May gently started to explain that a profits warning only meant a company did not expect to make as much money as had been envisaged. If we always walked away from companies issuing profits warnings, many more businesses would go bust, she said.
Mr Corbyn became ratty. After a spiel about how Carillion’s share price had fallen, he said: ‘It looks like the Government was handing Carillion public contracts either to keep the company afloat, which clearly hasn’t worked, or it was just deeply negligent of the crisis that was coming down the line.’ And with that he ambled back to his place and sat down.
Mrs May was baffled. ‘I’m very happy to answer questions when the Rt Hon Gentleman asks one,’ she said. But in this case ‘he didn’t’. So she, too, sat down.
Labour MPs went nuts. Dawn Butler, as ever sitting next to Mr Corbyn, mouthed ‘pa-fet-ic!’ Tom Watson, who after weight loss looks a little like Spongebob Squarepants, sucked his cheeks. Mr Corbyn started snarling at the Tory benches, which had enjoyed Mrs May’s uncharacteristically brisk repartee.
Mr Corbyn was so bad, maybe he should think of outsourcing his questions for future PMQs.//
Haha bang on again Quintin Letts.