Barely functioning Maybot clunks into the summer recess | John Crace

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago to the week, Theresa May faced her first prime minister’s questions. Back then she was the only grownup left standing after a Conservative leadership contest that had started as farce and ended as performance art. She was greeted by her backbenchers in the Commons as a latter-day Britannia; a saviour to see the country through the trials of Brexit.

Now she is prime minister in name only. No longer even Theresa May but a barely functioning Maybot. She knows it, her backbenchers know it.

Much as they may have tried to paper over the cracks by giving her a welcome that was just a little too enthusiastic to be credible. A roar laced with pity and self-preservation. The Maybot may not be up to much but she was all that was standing between them and a possible Labour government. Best just to grit their teeth and get through the session.

Not that the Maybot was facing the strongest of opposition. Jeremy Corbyn may be a far more credible leader than he appeared to be a year ago, but he still struggles to make his point at the dispatch box. Even when the Maybot is on the ropes, the Labour leader can’t put her away.

Corbyn began with a dig about the chancellor’s remarks that many public sector workers were overpaid. The Maybot ignored this and just read out some slogans that her operators had prepared for her.

One question down, five to go. Corbyn wisely chose to forget the funny stuff and concentrate on the basics. Nurses were earning £23K, job centre workers just £15K and both had had their pay frozen for five years. “What does she say to that?” he asked.

Simples. If people really weren’t happy with being a nurse, they could always go and get a job reading the news for the BBC. Failing that they should take comfort in how much they were valued.

“He and I both value public sector workers,” the Maybot said. “We both value our public sector services. The difference is …” Her voice tailed off. The difference was that she didn’t value them quite enough to give them any more money.

“Can we do a reality check on this?” asked Corbyn, who was beginning to lose patience with the Maybot’s steadfast refusal to engage with any reality other than her distorted own. There was enough money to bung the DUP £1.5bn to protect her own job. Check. The Maybot nodded. And yet one in eight workers were still living in poverty. Check.

Uncheck. This last statement didn’t compute. “The best route out of poverty is work,” said the Maybot, triumphantly resorting to default basic settings. Brilliant. Corbyn had just asked her what she was going to do about in-work poverty and she had just said people who already had a job should make more of an effort to get a job they already had. Either that, or they should get another one.

Just when it seemed the Maybot could not get more meta she proudly declared that it was the Conservatives who had introduced the “national living wage” of £7.20 per hour – or 10 seconds of Huw Edwards’s news reading time. It seemed to have slipped her mind that the first thing she had done as prime minister had been to sack the man responsible for it.

Corbyn ended by pointing out that, while the country was slowly falling apart, her cabinet was capable of doing nothing other than bickering with one another.

The Maybot shook her head vigorously and stuck her fingers in her ears. La, la, la. Everything was fine. Be a bit more positive. Only the Conservatives could deliver a strong economy because the Tories were the only party who could form a strong and stable government.

Oops. She had just lapsed into some of the slogans she used in the election campaign. It hadn’t gone well then and it wasn’t going that well now.

The chief whip, Gavin Williamson, rolled his eyes and checked his watch. Not long now. A few tame Tories asked a few tame questions to fill in time, but no one’s heart was really in it. Still, the Maybot had somehow managed to make it to the summer recess without being decommissioned. That had to be worth a few hollow cheers.