PMQs Sketch: It might go viral, Jeremy Corbyn, but it's radioactive

`It is, frankly beneath me to even write about what took place in the House of Commons at noon on Wednesday, and it’s certainly beneath you to read about it, but if we crack on quickly enough we might just get through it.

It was when Jeremy Corbyn first put his “questions” on the despatch box that it was clear it was going to be an even bigger waste of time than usual. And in every sense of the word. Not merely grander in its fundamental pointlessness. But larger on the more humdrum measure of the sheer amount of time that would be wasted.

From my position, a few feet above the leader of the opposition’s right shoulder, his six questions appeared to stretch to between ten and fifteen pages, all typed out in full. This was not going to be quick.

Regular watchers of Prime Minister’s Questions, of which there must theoretically be a few, will be long used to Mr Corbyn’s strategy of using the session not actually to interrogate Theresa May’s near countless failings, but to make lengthy shouty clips that are not questions all, which are then clipped and released as video soundbites on his own social media channels.

On this occasion, we must assume Mr Corbyn was considering the local elections tomorrow. A period during which political campaigning is banned, but online campaigning is fine, which means as many viral videos as possible is desirable. It meant that his now traditional viral rant was not merely saved up for the final question, but in fact each question was deployed as a rant on a different topic. To her credit, Theresa May did him the courtesy of mining deep inside each for a question that might be there, and attempting to answer it. But no one was listening, either to her or to him.

Jeremy Corbyn asked Theresa May if she felt “any guilt” at her Home Secretary’s departure, before giving way to a Castro at the UN style ramble through education, the NHS, policing, and I can’t even remember what else.

It is worth remembering that three rows behind Theresa May the now-ex Home Secretary wa sitting. She has resigned as a consequence of a scandal that amounts essentially to the abuse of ethnic minority British pensioners, carried out as a consequence of policies slavishly followed by the current Prime Minister.

Mr Corbyn also knew that at the end of Prime Minister’s Questions, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt would be making a statement confirming that an algorithmic error in sending out breast cancer screening letters is likely to have caused the premature death of 135 to 270 women.

He also knew that the Prime Minister’s Brexit “war cabinet” would be spending the afternoon fighting over their position on the UK’s future customs arrangements with the EU, even though both the options they would be fighting over have already been rejected by Brussels, and whatever they decide no replacement for current arrangements is going to be ready by 2021, which is when it needs to be, at the latest.

This stuff is deadly serious. It is government by chimpanzee. An utter dereliction of the basic responsibilities for which these people take public salaries. Though Jeremy Corbyn can say nothing on this, because his party is as hopelessly divided as the government. And he too has spent thirty years in Westminster campaigning for hard Brexit, without caring for even a nanosecond about the impossiblity of new customs arrangements and the like. He is every bit as decadent as they are.

And yet, here he was, shouting for the viral clip in what sounded like an empty room and might as well have been.

It was, in no uncertain terms, an embarrassment.

And then, by about 1pm, when he’d barely sat down, there was his rant on Twitter and Facebook. It’s already been viewed a hundred thousand times.

Maybe he’s smarter than he looks.