With this calibre of MP, it's no wonder Britain is on the decline
To understand the scale of the catastrophe engulfing our country, look no further than a three-minute clip of a Government minister being eaten alive by a veteran broadcaster today.
On paper, Economic Secretary to The Treasury Emma Reynolds may well be quite bright (she has a Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree from Oxford). She certainly has no shortage of experience, having spent her entire career in and around politics.
Asked to demonstrate the most basic level of understanding about what she and her department are doing with vast sums of our money, however, she was as exposed as a boggle-eyed frog on a lily leaf.
The gory detail of the latest ministerial car crash scarcely matters, though in 20 years as a political journalist, Reynolds's encounter with Nick Ferrari is one of the most excruciating interviews I have heard. Put simply, she had no idea what she was talking about – which is alarming, given her power.
What matters more is the overall impression created by an endless succession of ministers from Keir Starmer's Government who, under the slightest pressure, seem just as weak and ill-informed. It is not only that they refuse to give straight answers to simple questions, or to take any responsibility for obvious errors. That's par for the course among professional politicians. It is that they routinely insult our intelligence, dismiss and denigrate our concerns and continually insist that black is white. The shameless telling of bare-faced lies is like nothing I have observed before. And if caught out, they simply double down.
Witness the behaviour of Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, whose ludicrous assertion that the 'majority' of Channel migrants are women and children is demonstrably untrue, giving him no way out. Did he apologise? Not at all! Instead, he claimed he had been 'misrepresented', and tried to shift the blame to Reform UK.
Oh, I know that all governments have their share of ministerial muppets and dreary career politicians who owe their rise up the greasy pole less to ability than to connections, favours owed, or absence of anyone better. Nor are crash interviews the preserve of any one political party. They happen from time to time during every administration, when interviewees are tired, distracted, or badly briefed.
What is different about this lot is the sheer frequency with which they demonstrate their ineptitude, and the depths to which they sink as they try to deflect. Reynolds's calamitous appearance comes hot on the heels of a similar disaster involving her Treasury colleague James Murray last week. Nine times the minister was asked where migrants will go in the unlikely event that the Government honours a pledge to stop using hotel accommodation. Nine times he failed to give his interviewer an answer. He looked as panicked and out of his depth as a drowning man.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor on Sunday tried to use victims of the grooming gangs as a shield against awkward questions about the responsibility of the many authorities that turned a blind eye, as if performative compassion should shut down that vital debate. At least she did not repeat previous shameful 'lines to take' from Downing Street, smearing the campaign for a public inquiry as 'far-Right.'
In two decades reporting on governments of all political stripes, I have never witnessed such systematic incompetence and mediocrity. How can our country bear another four years of this?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
27 minutes ago
- BBC News
Casey report pulls no punches - but will it lead to meaningful change?
Baroness Louise Casey's report into group-based sexual exploitation pulls no punches in its description of the failures at all levels to tackle what it calls one of the most horrendous crimes in our the question many will be asking is will her report bring about meaningful change?Certainly, for survivors of abuse, who have often had to fight hard to get their voices heard, practical, on-the-ground change will be government accepted all Baroness Casey's recommendations, but the grooming gangs report itself made the point that many of the problems highlighted have been known about for years – yet there was a failure to act over decades. The report said too often the children being abused were blamed, not helped."If we'd got this right years ago – seeing these girls as children raped rather than 'wayward teenagers' or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job - then I doubt we'd be in this place now," Baroness Casey said in her foreword to the fact, if you were to read many past reports, including Baroness Casey's own 2015 investigation into the failure to tackle grooming gangs by Rotherham Council, you would find many of the same issues being instance, ten years ago she recommended tighter checks on Rotherham taxis because of their use by grooming gangs. In Monday's audit she called for legal loopholes to be closed nationally so cab drivers can't simply move to another area to get a she described the lack of action by the authorities over the years as "denial" or a collective "blindness", particularly when it comes to the ethnicity of government has accepted her call for better data collection on the ethnicity of grooming gang suspects and has promised research into what that tells us about the factors driving reliable information, Baroness Casey argues there is a vacuum which different sides can use to "suit the ends of those presenting it."The national inquiry will be watched closely to again see if its recommendations are put into one experienced lawyer put it, this can't be another exercise in simply gathering evidence and producing recommendations that are quietly shelved.
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Abortion laws in England and Wales face biggest shake-up in nearly 60 years
Parliament is set to vote on whether to decriminalise abortion on Tuesday, in what would be the biggest shake-up to reproductive rights in England and Wales in almost 60 years. Fierce battles have been fought behind the scenes, with Labour backbenchers Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy lobbying in a bid to have their rival amendments taken forward for a vote. It is understood only one will be voted on, and with Antoniazzi's being the lead amendment on the order paper, it is more than likely that hers will be selected. The amendments, which are due to be considered during the report stage of the Crime and Policing Bill, would see the biggest change to abortion law since the Abortion Act of 1967. 'Inducing a miscarriage' remains a criminal offence, with the Abortion Act setting out strict criteria under which terminations can legally take place. Calls for law reform have increased in recent years, alongside an increased number of prosecutions of women suspected of illegal abortions. Antoniazzi's amendment has a higher number of backers, with more than 170 names, and significant cross-party support, with signatories from parties including Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SDLP, and the Conservatives. If both the amendment and its parent bill are passed, it would mean women would no longer be prosecuted for ending their own pregnancies. However, it would not change the framework by which abortion is accessed, with time limits, telemedicine, the grounds for abortion, and the requirement for two doctors' approval all remaining in place. Among the organisations supporting a change in the law are the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Nursing, and the British Medical Association. 'Under the current laws, women who have experienced unexplained pregnancy loss may also be vulnerable to criminal investigation, and health professionals placed under unacceptable and unwarranted scrutiny,' Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said. 'Worryingly, the fear of being investigated by the police may deter women from seeking urgent medical attention. We believe this is not in the public interest and that these women should be treated with care and compassion, without judgment or fear of imprisonment.' Sarah Salkeld, deputy medical director at MSI Reproductive Choices, said: 'In no other part of healthcare do you face prison potentially by taking a medical treatment.' She said that during what is often a 'very upsetting scenario already,' police investigations 'can turn people's lives upside down' and that some women have spent months or years under investigation before cases were dropped. Salkeld said that 'the vast majority of people are under 10 weeks' when they have a termination, but that those who access abortion outside the legal framework are 'potentially very vulnerable people' such as those in abusive relationships, or who have serious mental health problems. Creasy's more complex amendment, seeks to go further, also removing doctors from the criminal law, and seeking to prevent abortion law from being changed by a future parliament. Several MPs have signed both amendments, although in recent days, some have withdrawn their name from Creasy's, following public and private lobbying. There has been disquiet among MPs and campaigners about the rival amendments, dividing a camp of people who essentially want to achieve the same aim. There are worries the row over the right way to improve women's rights will in fact have the opposite effect, and draw attention to what can be a divisive issue. Reform leader Nigel Farage said the current 24 week time limit is 'utterly ludicrous.' The British Pregnancy Advice Service (Bpas) has been one of the most vocal supporters of Antoniazzi's amendment – and a vocal critic of Creasy's. The second of the country's biggest abortion providers, MSI Reproductive Choices, is also backing the Antoniazzi amendment, which Louise McCudden, UK head of external affairs said, 'is designed to fix a very specific, urgent problem that we're seeing at the moment, which is women facing criminal investigation and prison for ending their own pregnancies. 'Getting abortion law reform right will take time … we don't want to rush that. But also, the women who are being investigated and facing prosecution and jail can't afford to wait.' She added that the vote would represent 'a massive milestone.' 'We see in the United States within rollbacks on reproductive rights and rollbacks on gender equality,' she said. 'So it sends a really powerful signal, not just to women here, that they're being supported, [but] also to countries around the world … that the rollback isn't inevitable.'
Telegraph
34 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Read the grooming gang report in full
Baroness Casey's review of the grooming gang scandal was published on Monday. The crossbench peer's 197-page report found that flawed data were used by public bodies to dismiss claims about Asian grooming gangs as 'sensationalised, biased or untrue'. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told MPs the Government would accept all its recommendations, including setting up a national inquiry into grooming gangs. You can read the report in full here.
