Wednesday, April 27, 2016

How Jeremy Corbyn has changed prime minister's questions

Dr Peter Bull, a psychologist from the University of York, appeared on Daily Politics today talking about his research into Jeremy Corbyn's approach to prime minister's questions.

As you can see above, he found that Corbyn's tactic of sourcing questions from members of the public has reduced the confrontational nature of PMQs in that David Cameron is less likely to reply to such questions with a personal attack on him.

It happens that the programme picked up this research from a press release I wrote in my day job.

Dr Bull is presenting his research tomorrow at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Nottingham.

I had originally wanted to aim the release at last Sunday's papers, but it was not possible to finalise it in time. Then a colleague had the bright idea of giving it a Wednesday embargo to coincide with today's PMQs.

In February I blogged here that Cameron had learnt how to deal with these questions from the public.

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