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But Corbyn never presses him on any of this: he asks a question, Cameron smugly disgorges a little glob of distortions and half-truths, and then Corbyn asks another. It's all very admirably restrained and serious, even statesmanlike, but it's not really doing anything. Is he really trying to convince the Tories to do more about housing and mental health, as if their assaults on these services were an unexpected cockup rather than the fruition of an ideological agenda?A mature, sensible PMQs is a fine idea, but it misses the point of what PMQs—and Parliament itself—is really about. As a good Marxist, Corbyn should know that the organs of our representative democracy are really just a vast sideshow to the real exercise of political power, which comes from our financial overlords, and, sometimes, an empowered working class. It's just a vehicle for propaganda, and treating it as anything else doesn't do anyone any favors. There's no point trying to make PMQs into less of a circus: however you arrange the props, however seriously you talk to the audience, it's all still taking place in a big stripy tent, and the caged elephants are still shitting all over the sawdust.Once Corbyn sits back down, the theatrical farce clanks back into gear. Andrew Turner, the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight, has a very important question about a tiger that the island's zoo is trying to import from a circus in Belgium. The chamber, which had been unusually hushed, breaks out into a low, buzzing drone of chatting and coughing: our highest democratic institution suddenly sounds like a swarm of flies. Someone shouts that they want to hear more about the tiger. MPs bleat goatishly from slack, grinning lips. This is what they came here for; this is why they're in politics. They want to hear more about the tiger, and then they want a glass of milk, and someone to tuck them into bed. "I too want to hear about the tiger," says David Cameron. He goes on to mention that there's a rhino at Cotswolds Wildlife Park named after his daughter. None of these animals will ever escape their circus.And on it goes. There's some old-fashioned sparring between the Prime Minister and the SNP, and then Tom Pursglove, a wilting beansprout that has somehow managed to become the Conservative MP for Corby, remarks that "the Prime Minister has a lot to be pleased with Corby for—and that's Corby, not Corbyn." There's a ripple of forced laughter, as if this were actually a joke rather than a total indictment of an education system that can no longer even produce a minimum level of wit among its insufferable poshos. Apparently, the world has Corby to thank for inventing the DVD case. Not the DVD itself, the box it comes in. Cameron replies that he is indeed "feeling a bit of Corby-mania." A recent poll in America revealed that almost a third of the country would support a military coup. Maybe they're on to something.Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.Read on Noisey: Why Do Most British Musicians Not Give a Shit About the Politics That Affect Their Fans?