British Democracy Up Close and Personal: The PM’s Question Hour

Live, from London! No, not Saturday night satire, but the Prime Minister's question hour in the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon, February 15, as shown on BBC-TV -- great stuff from by far the world's oldest parliamentary democracy. There are some real challenges to the PM on a host of security issues (Tony Blair is sarcastically confronted by the "shadow" [Conservative Party-designated] foreign secretary on why the government took so long to arrest Abdul Hamza, a just convicted Muslim terrorist) and on a new pending security bill; he responds equally forcefully and wittily to the right honourable gentleman. But there are also questions from MP's, of the PM's own Labour Party among others, on a wide variety of domestic issues, including sharply rising electricity and gas prices, cutbacks in health care, and the difficulty of many middle-class families in obtaining affordable housing (sound familiar?). Of course, a few of the inquiries are "lobs," but far more often, the PM is assaulted on a host of issues. Whatever else one thinks of Blair -- he is widely regarded here as Bush's lapdog on the Iraq War -- he is quick on his feet and often quite elegant in his speech, in a way one couldn't begin to imagine from his often smirking, verbally bumbling counterpart in Washington.

In the U.S., of course, the executive and legislative branches are separate, and the President rarely visits Capitol Hill, except for the annual, very staged State of the Union Address and on the occasion of a national emergency. But in the British system (as mostly replicated in Israel), the executive branch is embedded in the legislative one, thus allowing constituency-based legislators to raise their own and their constituents' concerns to the most powerful figure in the land. Watching the BBC, I tried to imagine Bush answering some well-informed, tough questions, especially inquiries whose purpose was not only to score partisan points, but also to derive some needed information and to forge public policy. How would he function unscripted? I can't see W doing well at all.

--David Szonyi