Key points
Corbyn pressed the prime minister on the home secretary, Amber Rudd’s since-abandoned plans to make companies publish their numbers of foreign employees. He asked why someone’s place of birth mattered so much to the government. May responded that it was not a policy, had never been announced and that there would be no “naming and shaming” of foreign workers.
On the Brexit confusion, Corbyn accused May of having “no plans, no strategy, no clarity, no transparency or scrutiny of the process. The jobs of millions are at stake, the pound is plummeting, business is worrying, and the government has no answers.” May said that, unlike Labour, she was optimistic and then accused Corbyn of not respecting the referendum verdict. “We are listening and delivering,” she said.
Snap verdict
Corbyn never quite put the ball in the back of the net, but this wasn’t May’s finest moment either and the Labour leader did quite usefully catalogue some of the weaknesses in the government’s position on Brexit.
The very fact that Corbyn focused on Brexit was striking, because since the referendum (and for some time before) he has generally avoided the topic. But, as usual, he asked strong questions and failed to follow them up. (In tennis terms, he has an adequate serve, but no return.) He also failed to press May on the one question that is really topical today: in the light of her U-turn on Tuesday night on a Brexit debate, can she now commit to giving MPs a vote on a substantive motion?
May responded competently, but not brilliantly, to Corbyn’s questions, and interestingly she avoided some of the gratuitous Labour-bashing that has marred some of her earlier PMQs, although she did finish with a neat point about Labour getting the same answer when it asks a question for a second time. (Although this was premised on a claim that Emily Thornberry has called for a second referendum on the EU, which, as far as I’m aware, she hasn’t.)
Most memorable lines
Corbyn, after accepting May’s congratulations on his re-election:
I’m most grateful to over 300,000 people who voted for me, which is rather more than voted for her to become leader of her party.
May, having accused the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, of wanting a second Brexit referendum:
You can ask the same question again, you’ll still get the answer you don’t want.
