Give that man a stiff drink. Better still, give him a day pass to Michael Gove’s favourite crack den. Anything to blot out the memories of the last few hours. Just about the only consolation that Mel Stride can take from his appearances on the Trevor Phillips and Laura Kuenssberg shows is his almost total anonymity. Even close friends don’t always recognise him in the street. Fewer still would be able to tell you that he is the work and pensions secretary.
But what Mel does have going for him is his loyalty to a lost cause. That must count for something. And he is quite good-natured with it. He is the sort of bloke with whom it would be quite nice to spend a day at the cricket. Just an average man doing an average job. Which means he ranks quite highly in the current Tory hierarchy. Rishi Sunak can’t buy that level of mediocrity at present. So when the call came out that No 10 was looking for a fall guy for the Sunday shows, Mel was quick to volunteer. This too shall pass.
Three days on and still the prime minister’s shortest day in France is dominating the headlines. Even the Tory media are agreed that Rishi Sunak’s decision to swerve the international leaders’ event and take the first chopper out of Normandy was an epic fail. Phillips was quick to punch the bruise. What was so important that Sunak had to go back to London? Other than to give an election interview to ITV?
Mel squirmed. This was going to be a very long 15 minutes. Um … He hadn’t actually discussed this with Rish! Yup. That made sense. He knew he was going to be asked about this and had made no effort to get any clarification from No 10 about what the hell the prime minister and his team had been thinking. More likely the truth was even worse than just looking stupid. Reports have suggested that Sunak couldn’t face a commemoration of European solidarity. Can’t have everyone feeling misty-eyed about the EU.
At this point, Phillips started to take pity on Stride. “This isn’t fair on you,” he said. Being sent out so unprepared. But this wasn’t going to stop him shooting the messenger. Did the prime minister not know that thousands of Americans, French, Canadians and Germans had also died during the Normandy campaign? Or was he just not that bothered?
“Rishi had some very important engagements in his diary before the election was called,” Mel ad-libbed. Digging himself in deeper, when every instinct was to say he had no idea if anyone in No 10 had a functioning brain cell. “He’s apologised and that’s good. He cares deeply. He didn’t run away.” Except that’s precisely what he did. He cared so much, he couldn’t be arsed to stay.
Eventually Phillips relented. “I don’t want to make you feel any more uncomfortable,” he said. How about we just agree that Sunak is the wrong prime minister at the wrong time? What did Mel think about replacing him? Absolutely not. It was crucial that Rish! stayed in place. He was keen that the Tories should suffer a historic defeat. It was what the country wanted.
Things didn’t improve much when the conversation turned to tax. Mel insisted they were going down significantly, while Trevor showed a graph indicating they were at their highest levels in 70 years. Er … yes, but they could be even higher if we hadn’t reduced national insurance. So the trajectory is now going down at the same time as going up. Schrödinger’s taxes.
Stride also got confused about cutting welfare benefits and implying that families with three children got what they deserved. He also said that cracking down on tax evasion would bring in at least another £6bn. In which case, why hadn’t the Tories done this earlier? You’ve had 14 years, lads. Come the end, he smiled nervously. Look on the bright side, Mel. This could be the last time you ever have to do this.
Over on the Kuenssberg show, Nigel Farage was making what has now become an almost daily appearance. The BBC can’t get enough of him. Anything to shake up the boredom of the election campaign. Just hope Nige doesn’t disappoint by failing to say something unpleasant or controversial. Laura began by asking why he seemed so happy to be helping put Labour in power.
Nige quite reasonably observed that the Tories had pretty much done that job already, but declined to join the dots. A Conservative electoral wipeout makes his life much easier as post-election he can claim to be the official opposition, and if all goes well, he can do a reverse takeover of the Tory party.
We then moved on to policy specifics. Never Farage’s strong point. It would have been nice for him to have been reminded of the damage his Brexit had done to the country, but I guess you can’t have everything. After all, Nige doesn’t have the best record on making things work. He’s happiest as the voice of protest. Then again, Brexit is ancient history for our current crop of memory-challenged politicians. Maybe it was just a bad dream. Never happened. The 4% hit to GDP just a figment of an altered state of consciousness. Something none of the main parties wants to mention.
“You want to make £50bn of spending cuts,” said Laura. Yes, said Nige confidently. And don’t forget we are going to raise the income tax threshold to £20k and cut inheritance tax. Inadvertently adding to the necessary spending cuts. But where were the cuts going to come from? That was easy, Farage replied. We could stop all the diversity training in the NHS. Wow! Who knew that cost £50bn?
It rapidly dawned on everyone that Nige was even worse at economics and basic maths than Jeremy Hunt. Terrifying. Leave him to run the country with Dicky Tice as chancellor and we will be crying out for Liz Truss to make a return. None of his figures make sense. They are all just uncosted soundbites, designed to appeal to disaffected voters. He claims to be saving the country in its hour of need, but deep down, he just isn’t that serious. He can talk the talk, but he can’t walk the walk.
Nige ended with a dig at Sunak. “He doesn’t understand our culture,” he had said on Friday. On Sunday, he tried to cover his tracks by saying he was talking about class and privilege – Farage should know all about that – but the racial slur was implicit. Laura picked him up on that, but the damage was done.
On Sky, the last word went to Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He was damning of the main parties for disguising the impact of spending cuts. You’re making a bad situation worse, he said, so stop ruling things out. They won’t, of course. No one won an election by telling voters the truth.
