At her first PMQs, Theresa May was surprisingly theatrical – Jeremy Corbyn should have tried harder to trip her up

Even I thought she went too far in being rude to Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who was allowed a rare final question by John Bercow, the Speaker. What she said was needlessly unkind

Theresa May said in her first PMQs that she wants to get immigration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ (PA)

At her first Prime Minister's Questions today Theresa May was more theatrical than I expected. She can do serious defence of indefensible Government policies, we knew that; she has been doing it for six years. We knew she can do scripted jokes, too. Today she did a good one about Jeremy Corbyn being the sort of boss who doesn’t listen to his workers, makes them do too many jobs and exploits the rules in his own interest.

It was the final flourish – “remind him of anybody?” – that was new. And it was delivered with some real stagecraft.

What the new Prime Minister didn’t have to do, though, was to think on her feet. She dodged one question, from Edward Leigh, the Eurosceptic Tory backbencher, about what she intended to do about the free movement of EU workers. But she answered it, in effect, by answering another tricky one, from another Tory Eurosceptic, Philip Davies, who wanted to know if the 100,000-a-year net immigration target still stood.

There had been some dithering about this from Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, yesterday, but May repeated the target that was in the Tory manifesto – albeit in what one American politician once called “the third person once removed”. She wanted to get net immigration down to sustainable levels, she said, and “the Government believes that is tens of thousands”.

It was another less well-noticed similarity to Margaret Thatcher: the implication that she and “the Government” were two different things.

She said the target might take time to achieve, but made it clear without being explicit – she is a politician after all – that reducing immigration is her objective and that “controls” on free movement would be needed.

If you were looking for the seeds of her downfall – always a good thing to do on a Prime Minister’s debut – you might say that she seemed a little too pleased to find herself “in my new position” as she put it to a Labour MP. She could get away with being cruel to Corbyn in a way that David Cameron never could because he would have met a wall of “Flashman”. But even I thought she went too far in being rude to Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, allowed a rare final question by John Bercow, the Speaker. She and Farron first came across each other when competing for the safe Labour seat of Durham North West – embarrassing election addresses are available on the internet – but her closing observation, that they both ended up as party leaders although “my party is a little bigger than his is”, was needlessly unkind.

The great mystery of the session was why the Leader of the Opposition chose to play it so badly. We all know that he doesn’t do politics as usual, and we all expected him to be mashed by May today, but there was simply no need to make it so easy for her.

This would have been a good chance, with his back to the wall, to have asked just one question that put her slightly on the spot. One question that she was forced obviously to avoid answering. One line that tested the weaknesses of her premiership before it sets in the public mind.

But there was nothing. He asked a first question about an inquiry into the Orgreave clash between miners and the police in 1984. But the Home Secretary was already booked to reply to that in half an hour’s time.

Then he had a theme, which was to pick up on the most un-Tory of May’s promises on the steps of 10 Downing Street and to say, in effect, “I hope you mean it”. He didn’t even have any emails from members of the public.

There were lots of questions he could have asked that could have caused her difficulty: Leigh and Davies asked two of them. But Corbyn never asks about Europe, which is going to be odd, given that Brexit is the biggest question in British politics now.

You could imagine what John Smith would have made of the Tory divisions on that subject, and indeed of May’s own contradictions. No wonder May said she looked forward to her exchanges with Corbyn at the despatch box “for many years to come”.

Funnily enough, there was a chap who looks a bit like John Smith right at the back of the Labour benches, sitting next to Angela Eagle.

Andrew Grice and I discussed Theresa May’s first Prime Minister’s Question on Facebook video