PMQs sketch: At least Groundhog Day is a decent movie
If, in the movie Groundhog Day, a knackered old man rambled through the same old questions on the crisis in the NHS and a spiky-faced, nervous, slightly less old woman hardly bothered to conceal her contempt at being compelled to dangle a non-answer in front of him, then the phrase ‘It’s a bit like Groundhog Day’ would never have entered common parlance
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Your support makes all the difference.The thing about Groundhog Day is it’s quite a good film. If you had to watch Groundhog Day every day for the rest of your life, or even just once a week at Wednesday lunchtime, you’d probably come to accept there are worse ways to be forced to spend your time.
In that crucial respect, though the temptation to say the opposite can overwhelm, Prime Minister’s Questions is in fact nothing like Groundhog Day. In Groundhog Day, a man goes on wild drink and drug rampages, commits suicide in a range of ever more exciting ways, punches a life insurance salesman several hundred times, learns to play the piano and, in the end, convinces a nice young woman to fall in love with him.
If, in the movie Groundhog Day, a knackered old man rambled through the same old questions on the crisis in the NHS and a spiky-faced, nervous, slightly less old woman hardly bothered to conceal her contempt at being vaguely expected to dangle an answer in front of him then the phrase "It’s a bit like Groundhog Day" would never have entered common parlance at all.
Political sketch writers, forced to sit through such things and lacking anything of any interest to say about them, would not be able to re-reel out the same tired old Groundhog Day gags, and then where would we be?
So, no. Prime Minister’s Questions was nothing like Groundhog Day. It was long. It was pointless. It was a waste of time. It offered not the vaguest glimmer of insight or flicker of illumination.
For the record, it is possibly worth pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn had a half decent joke, which means he has already equalled his tally for 2016 and could perhaps even beat it this year.
"The Prime Minister has called for a shared society," he said. "Well we certainly have that. More people sharing hospital corridors on trolleys."
The solution, we learnt, was to "scrap the corporation tax cuts" and spend it on the NHS, which viewers of Prime Minister’s Questions, regular readers of this sketch, or fans of the movie Groundhog Day may know has been suggested once or twice before and certainly will be again. It will not become a good idea.
He also raised an incident in which a 22-month-old child was treated in hospital on "two plastic chairs covered with a blanket".
If the Prime Minister was as horrified as she appeared to be, perhaps she could offer the only sensible solution. Lay out the sick children of the nation on the dispatch boxes of the House of Commons, and relocate Prime Minister's Questions to its natural home – on two plastic chairs under a blanket.
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