Worried aides for Tony Blair held brainstorm session to help him perform at Prime Minister's Questions, documents reveal

He earned a reputation during his decade in Downing Street as a charismatic leader able to communicate effectively.

But newly released files suggest Tony Blair’s spin team felt his weekly performances at the Commons despatch box required major improvement – and indicate the premier detested the spectacle anyway.

Such was the concern over Mr Blair’s weekly pummelling by Opposition leader William Hague at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) that his closest aides held a brainstorming session in February 2000 to devise a “fresh approach”.

Former prime minister Tony Blair speaking during Prime Minister's Question in the House of Commons. Picture: PA/PA Wire

The upshot was to urge Mr Blair to adopt a new “message-based approach”, rather than what highly regarded Labour upstart David Miliband said was a performance akin to “a student trying to cram facts on the morning of the exam”.

A memo from close aides told Mr Blair: “Although PMQs is a pain in the neck, it is important and worth taking seriously.

“We think you should think of a fresh approach from next week so we can get back on top.”

It suggested Mr Blair should regard PMQs as a theatrical performance rather than seeing the “political pantomime as if it were a genuine question-and-answers session”.

The memo added: “Hague simply comes along with a five-minute script which he delivered well, ignoring your answers.”

The aides said the PM should meet with them for 30 minutes each Wednesday to “practice”.

Mr Blair, however, seemed unconvinced.

“This is fine up to a point,” the Prime Minister wrote in reply to the brainstorming memo.

“But you are forgetting that in the past two weeks we have had genuine problems to deal with.”

Mr Blair also made his views on PMQs clear.

“I don’t think we should start panicking about this, or thinking PMQs is ever going to be other than something to endure,” he wrote.

“It is, in my view, the worst forum in which to appear.”

Documents released by the National Archives in Kew also show press secretary Alastair Campbell presented his boss with some suggestions for witty one-liners and put-downs in the months before the brainstorming.

They included dismissing Mr Hague’s regular wisecracks at PMQs with the retort: “If the Tories want a comedian as a leader, they might as well go for Bernard Manning – though he might not be right-wing enough.”

Another pun focused on Mr Hague’s support for shamed Tory grandee Jeffrey Archer’s doomed bid to become the first Mayor of London.

It said: “And what did I say about the RHG [Right Honourable Gentleman] having better jokes than judgement? Only someone as lacking in judgement as the RHG could back a joke like Jeffrey Archer.”

It appeared that both suggestions were overruled for use at PMQs.

The documents were published as separately previously classified records suggested Mr Blair begged Kuwait to buy the UK’s latest artillery as payback for supporting the Middle Eastern nation during the Gulf War.

He repeatedly lobbied Crown Prince Sheikh Sa’ad between 1998 and 1999, even calling in on him during a brief stopover on a flight home from South Africa to press the point.

Internal briefing notes from the time show the UK Government believed it was “due the award of a significant defence equipment contract in recognition of its defence of Kuwait” following the invasion of Iraqi forces by Saddam Hussein in 1990.

Minutes of the hastily arranged Kuwait bilateral, in January 1999, reveal Mr Blair heeded Foreign Office officials’ request to talk up the AS90 howitzer, amid concerns the arms contract would go to the US and its M109.

A restricted memo from Number 10 Private Secretary Philip Barton to his Foreign Office colleague, Tim Barrow, covering the meeting between the prime minister and the Crown Prince, said: “The Prime Minister raised the AS90. It was an effective weapon, although he knew the US had offered the M109.

“He hoped very much that all the support we had given Kuwait would be remembered.

“The Crown Prince said that the price of the AS90 was very high. The Prime Minister pointed out that it would do the job properly.

“The defence minister said that they would take the state of relations with the UK into account.”

Internal briefing notes the day before the visit, contained in files now released by the National Archives in Kew, show Mr Blair was told the Government was “frankly disappointed” to have “won so little Kuwaiti defence business since end of Gulf War”, adding it had been a “loyal friend to Kuwait over many years”.

Mr Barton reported that Kuwait “would keep [the UK] in mind” before making a firm decision.

It was the latest in a number of attempts to woo the Kuwaitis, which included a grovelling letter from Mr Blair to the Crown Prince three months earlier, in which he described the AS90 as “the best 155mm gun in the world today”, stating its specification superiority to the US equivalent.

Mr Blair wrote: “This order from Kuwait is very important to the UK and to our industry at a difficult time. We will await your decision eagerly.”

The efforts did not immediately reap rewards, however, as Kuwait announced its intention to buy US artillery two months after Mr Blair’s visit.