I was quite wrong about the Liaison Committee – it was gripping to watch Boris Johnson scrutinised

The prime minister fumbled his way through the 90-minute session, which cruelly exposed the unsuitability of his speaking style, all ums, errs and unfinished sentences, to such a serious situation as this, writes John Rentoul

Boris Johnson finally agreed to attend the committee on Wednesday, 10 months after taking office (EPA)

As a reluctant wielder of a pitchfork, I was unwilling to join in the high democratic indignation about the prime minister’s refusal to be interviewed by the Liaison Committee of the House of Commons. The committee has existed since 1967, but it wasn’t important until Tony Blair decided in 2002 that inviting himself to its meetings would be a good way of trying to get his message across without the yah-boo of Prime Minister’s Questions.

The trouble was that without the noise and the theatre, and with such a practised communicator as Blair, these sessions were mostly dull. By the time we got to Theresa May, she managed to turn them into endless deserts of catatonic tedium. She and Yvette Cooper looked over their glasses at each other disapprovingly, but that was about as interesting as it got.

So I thought Boris Johnson’s inability to find a free date in his diary for the committee was not the worst outrage against democracy for someone who had tried to suspend parliament. Nor could I get too exercised about Johnson imposing his choice of chair, Sir Bernard Jenkin, on the committee, which is made up of the chairs of all the select committees.