Hello and welcome to the Red Box Politics Podcast and The Times.

I'm Matt Chorley.

This is part one of a two-part special all about Prime Minister's questions, that time midday every Wednesday when our politicians

go head to head in the House of Commons.

In part two, later in the week I'll speak to three people who have been sketch writers at the

Times on the best and the worst of the PMQ sessions that they've watched.

But in this episode I speak to Aiecesha Hazarika and Tom Hamilton who both worked for Ed

Minne about and later Harriet Harmon prepping them for PMQs.

They've got a new book, Punch and Judy politics, an insider's

guide to Prime Minister's questions in which they delve into the history of the perhaps most

famous session in the House of Commons. And so in this episode they give us the top 10

tips to surviving PMQs.

So let's start with the most obvious question then before you even get

into the chamber

top tip number one do know what you're using PMQs for what does that what that mean

actually well I think before you've even sort of thought about what your topic is going to be or what your

attack lines are going to be I think you need to have a bigger strategic think about

what how are you going to use your prime minister's questions and every leader

has done it slightly differently.

When we spoke to Tony Blair's team, he and Alisto Campbell said that they used it as a sort of strategic

framework to test really big meta-political messages. Harriet did it she wanted to try and use it as a platform to get gender issues in Parliament

William Haig said that he wanted to use it to restore the sort of dignity of the Conservative Party

...