What the Last PMQs Before the Election Told Us About the Campaign to Come

The braying blue suits, giddy with end-of-term cheek, the ironic jeers, the mock incredulity, the petulant sneers… watch Prime Minister's Questions for a few minutes and you remember why nobody else does. It's galling, almost unwatchable – an experience relished only by journalists, politicians, "self-confessed political junkies" and other debating society alumni. That said, there was a just about justifiable reason for watching today: it was the last PMQs before the General Election and, accordingly, the last time Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May would face each other, provided she maintains her refusal to take part in televised debates.

The Conservatives have clearly been instructed to drill home the campaign message – "Strong and Stable Government" – as much as possible. And like all good children who love nothing better than to make mummy proud, they followed orders with aplomb: I counted five mentions of "strong and stable" within the first five minutes. Leading off from a question by Richard Drax MP that tenuously linked Corbyn to a demand by a small socialist group to "disband MI5" (a Telegraph story from two years ago), May accused Corbyn of being "not up to the job" of "keeping the country safe". It rhymed neatly with her overall strategy, which was to emphasise a "clear choice" between a "government of chaos" that wrecks lives for "ordinary working families", and an eternal reign of Tory competence.

Although it's no secret that most of the Parliamentary Labour Party despises Corbyn and his politics, you might've expected them to at least feign enthusiasm given the circumstances. But they couldn't even be bothered to do that, staying relatively mute when their leader stepped up to the dispatch box. This meant that JC's final questions to the Prime Minister before the election were inaugurated by a chorus of Tory jeers.

Corbyn resurrected the technique he used when he did his first PMQs against David Cameron all those months ago: getting his questions directly from the public.

He asked questions on behalf of Christopher, whose husband has only seen a "1 percent increase in his wages" over the past five years; Laura, a primary school teacher who's seen funding levels for his students cut each year; and Cybil, a pensioner who has seen the quality of care in the NHS steadily decline under Tory rule. Wages, education and the NHS – they're the three subjects Labour performs best on.

The Conservatives dropped the pretend reverence they used to put on whenever Corbyn quoted members of the public in PMQs – they continued to laugh and jeer as he read out questions – and May's responses seemed increasingly toothless. In each case she avoided answering the question, which is normal for a Prime Minister, but wasn't able to convincingly deflect them either, which is less normal.

The positive flip-side of the Tories' repetitiveness is what wonks would call "message discipline", AKA "ramming the point home". Corbyn has less of that. By the end, though, he had attempted to re-appropriate the Tory's talk of "strength" and given it a left-populist gleam: "Mr. Speaker, stronger leadership is standing up to the many, not the few. But when it comes to the Prime Minister and the Conservatives, they only look after the richest, not the rest. They are strong against the weak and weak against the strong." It's a message that should resonate with the public, who've seen sluggish and stagnating wage growth for almost a decade, if it's able to cut through a generally hostile press and formidably united Conservative Party.

If that's the last we'll see of them together until the 8th of June, today's PMQ's didn't tell us much we didn't already know. Corbyn came across as typically flustered, uncoordinated, yet passionate. Although May's movements were formally perfect, they spoke to a certain airlessness: it's no wonder she's ducking out of TV debates. She ended with two calls to "vote for me", a slogan which reeks of authoritarian arrogance, but which the polls seem to suggest is going down well with a public seemingly committed to mass self-harm. The next five weeks will tell us just how deep that masochist streak runs.

@Yohannk