#PMQs with Christian Today: 'God's speed' in marathon finale before General Election

The last Prime Minister's Questions before the General Election was always going to be feisty.

It exceeded expectations. Never has the phrase "strong and stable" been repeated more times in nearly one hour of questions.

The final PMQs, meant to last just 30 minutes, went on for almost one hour with 35 MPs called

The Tory MPs were even more boisterous than usual, cheering or jeering almost every word. Their Labour counterparts, unusually for an opposition weeks away from an election, were muted in comparison.

In all likelihood it will be the last time Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn face each other and the Labour leader used the opportunity to return to his strategy of using questions from members of the public.

The exchange didn't bring much other than pre-election sound bites with the stand out line, unusually, coming from Corbyn: 'They are strong against the weak and weak against the strong.' Ironically it was a line from Ed Miliband.

But the major points of interest came afterwards with Stephen Timms, former Labour faith adviser, raising the government's lack of response on fixed-term betting terminals. Despite calling a consultation on the toxic machine, which have a maximum stake of £100 every 20 seconds, the government has made no response and shows little interest in doing so.

All Theresa May had to say in response was Timms and other Christian MPs who have campaigned on this will have to wait until after the election for a response. Her failure to answer raises suspicions she is more concerned about the vast tax receipts these machine bring the Treasury than the lives ruined by them.

Anti-semitism also featured heavily with a question from the outgoing Eric Pickles and this bought the attention onto Tim Farron. The Lib Dems have approved a candidate for Bradford East who said he would 'probably' fire rockets into Israel if he lived in Gaza and accused 'the Jews' of 'inflicting atrocities on Palestinians'.

But Farron dodged the bullet and instead asked about child refugees and referring to May's own label of the Tories as 'the nasty party' said: 'Her party has never been nastier.'

The frantic, high-paced, marathon finalPMQs allowed outgoing MPs to have one last chance to speak with two Brexiteers using it to wish May all the best in securing the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

'God's speed,' they said.

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