Prime Minister's Questions: Westminster's weekly gladiatorial combat

News

Prime Minister's Questions: Westminster's weekly gladiatorial combat - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 104

29 Aug 2025

Every Wednesday at noon, the House of Commons chamber comes alive with Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), the loudest, most theatrical half-hour in British politics. To some it’s democratic accountability; to others, a raucous playground of yah-boo antics. Loved and loathed in equal measure, PMQs is Parliament’s weekly shop window, offering a revealing glimpse of how Britain does politics. In this episode, we explore its history, purpose, and international impact, including why France briefly trialled it last year only to drop the idea.

Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

LISTEN

Each week, Prime Minister’s Questions turns Westminster into a spectacle of jeers, cheers, and gladiatorial verbal combat. Is it serious accountability, or just political theatre?

Joining us this week is Dr Ruxandra Serban, Lecturer in Comparative Politics at UCL, whose research compares PMQs with questioning sessions around the world. Together, we explore:

why it matters that the Prime Minister faces MPs each week;
how PMQs evolved from dry “engagements questions” into today’s noisy clash;
what the public really thinks of when they watch MPs jeering, cheering and point-scoring; and
whether PMQs could ever change, or if the ritual is too entrenched.

Dr Serban also explains how other countries view Westminster’s weekly spectacle – sometimes as a model of democratic accountability, sometimes as a cautionary tale.

She compares PMQs with similar sessions in Canada, Australia, and Ireland, and reflects on why France’s National Assembly briefly adopted its own PMQs-style experiment in 2024, before quietly abandoning it months later.

← Back to Parliament Matters homepage

Listen on our YouTube channel (captioned)

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

Our guest

Dr Ruxandra Serban

Ruxandra Serban is Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at University College London, researching how things work in different parliaments. She earned her doctorate in Political Science from UCL, on “Questioning Prime Ministers: Procedures and Practices in Parliamentary Democracies”. Previously she obtained a Master’s degree at UCL in Democracy and Comparative Politics, having graduated from the University of Bucharest with a BA in Political Science. She is a Co-convener of the Political Studies Association’s Specialist Group on Parliaments.

Resources

Hansard Society

Parliament Matters podcast – Gaffes and grace at PMQs (Episode 19)

UCL Constitution Unit

Transcript

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above.

Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D’Arcy: And I'm Mark D’Arcy. And welcome to another of our special summer recess editions where we're taking a look at Parliament's biggest weekly event, the Wednesday bun fight that is Prime Minister's Question Time.

Ruth Fox: Yes, the half hour when 15 randomly selected MPs get the chance to ask our head of government about any issue they choose and the Leader of the Opposition gets to put six questions to the Prime Minister.

Mark D’Arcy: One of the leading academic PMQ watchers is Ruxandra Serban, Lecturer of Comparative Politics at UCL, who's compared the way [00:01:00] Westminster interrogates its PM to the practice in other parliaments.

Ruth Fox: So we began by asking her what she thought the public made of Westminster's weekly gladiatorial combat.

Ruxandra Serban: Well, it seems that by many measures it's not an ideal view of Parliament. You see politicians arguing with each other, clashing over things, having this sort of very confrontational dialogue in many ways, and there's...

Full transcript →

Use the links below to subscribe to the Hansard Society's Parliament Matters podcast on your preferred app, or search for 'Parliament Matters' on whichever podcasting service you use. If you are unable to find our podcast, please email us here.

Apple

YouTube Podcasts

Spotify

More ways to subscribe

Parliament Matters homepage

Latest / Highlights

News / Parliament Matters Bulletin: What’s coming up in Parliament this week? 8-12 December 2025

Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces questions in the Chamber and before the Treasury Committee about the Budget. MPs debate the Railways Bill for the first time, continue “ping-pong” on the Employment Rights Bill, and are expected to conclude proceedings on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. The Conservative Party chooses the topic for Wednesday’s Opposition Day debate. In the Lords, Peers debate the English Devolution Bill, continue Committee scrutiny of the Crime and Policing Bill and of the assisted dying bill. Select Committees probe the Afghan data breach, Bank of England interest rates, and problems with the Whole of Government Accounts, and take evidence from the Energy Secretary and the Leader of the House.

News / 2024: The year our party system finally broke? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 118

This week we spotlight our new book Britain Votes 2024, featuring research by leading political scientists such as public opinion expert Professor Sir John Curtice. We explore how Labour secured a landslide on just a third of the vote, why the election broke so many records, and what these reveal about the fragility of UK democracy. We also cover the Budget fallout, the role of the Treasury Committee in the appointment of the new head of the OBR, more backbench dissent, ex-MPs shifting to the Greens and Reform, and a brewing row over delayed mayoral elections.

News / 101 resolutions and a Finance Bill. How the Budget becomes law - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 117

It’s Budget week, so we look at what happens after the Chancellor sits down and how the days announcements are converted into the Finance Bill. We speak to Lord Ricketts, Chair of the European Affairs Committee, about whether Parliament is prepared to scrutinise the “dynamic alignment” with EU laws that may emerge from the Government’s reset with Brussels. And we explore the latest twists in the assisted dying bill story, where a marathon battle is looming in the New Year after the Government allocated 10 additional Friday sittings for its scrutiny. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

News / Is the House of Lords going slow on the assisted dying bill? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 116

In this episode we look at the latest Covid Inquiry report addressing the lack of parliamentary scrutiny during the pandemic and the need for a better system for emergency law-making. With the Budget approaching, we explore how the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, might discipline ministers who announce policies outside Parliament and why a little-known motion could restrict debate on the Finance Bill. Sir David Beamish assesses whether the flood of amendments to the assisted dying bill risks a filibuster and raises constitutional questions. Finally, we hear from Marsha de Cordova MP and Sandro Gozi MEP on their work to reset UK–EU relations through the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

Blog / The assisted dying bill: Is the number of Lords amendments a parliamentary record?

The assisted dying bill has attracted an extraordinary number of amendments in the House of Lords, prompting questions about whether the volume is unprecedented. This blog examines how its amendment count compares with other bills in the current Session, and what the historical data shows about previous amendment-heavy legislation.