Gordon Brown has admitted that he thinks his weekly question and answer joust in Parliament isn’t really achieving much. Good I say – that’s my view too: we very rarely have exchanges that really hold the PM to account, and the whole “whose MPs can shout the loudest?” display of rowdy behaviour does damage to the reputation of Parliament and politics.
So kudos to Gordon for this in The Independent today:
Gordon Brown has expressed his growing disillusionment at what he considers the poor quality of the weekly battle of wills across the despatch box.
Mr Brown fears the 30-minute sessions have become so noisy and bad-tempered that the public will be increasingly repelled.
But the report then goes on:
He has made it clear he has no plans to change the event.
Well – why not? He’s Prime Minister, he’s there at PMQs taking centre stage role nearly every time and if nothing else – he could have a quiet word with the Labour Chief Whip about the behaviour of Labour MPs.
So come on Gordon – let’s have some action to back up your words!
Lynne Featherstone 
I personally think that you have a point here Lynn, but it’s not the main issue. I feel that the public are going to be much more turned off by the fact that the prime minister is rarely held to account not because of the noise and rowdiness, but because he doesn’t actually answer every question as honestly as he can, and because there are far too many “would you agree..blah blah blah…but that party would fail on it” questions which happen to be more akin to the stroking of an ego.Let’s have it so that the PM first and foremost isn’t able to evade questions. Today I think I counted 4 frank answers out of however many questions, last week I believe it was less. I, and the rest of the public, don’t want to hear the same old economic stats repeated over and over again, we want to hear the PM’s answers to our representative’s, and favoured party’s, questions.