Dan Jarvis is the model of a modern flailing minister
'Let's speak to someone who should know what's going on in the Home Office,' began presenter Emma Barnett, ominously. Someone enter the word 'should' into the Mr Universe competition: for here it was doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Mr Jarvis made an audible gulp as he was introduced as somebody who knew what he was talking about. Given the Starmer government's propensity for sending out its lower-order goons into acts of broadcasting masochism without proper briefing, it's quite possible that until this moment Mr Jarvis believed himself to be giving a word or two about kittens or sunbeams.
As he panicked, Mr Jarvis began throwing words around with gay abandon. He circled round himself, looped over himself and tied himself into a knot. 'The reality is there will be a range of different arrangements… no one thinks hotels are the appropriate setting… the appropriate setting will be a range of different arrangements.' Stock phrase called back to stock phrase in chorused glee. We were basically in Gilbert and Sullivan territory: he was the very model of a modern flailing minister.
Despite Mr Jarvis's protestations that actually the government was phasing out hotel use, Emma Barnett pointed out that no alternative to hotels had been found and, as it stood, the practice of just piling people into hotels 'was asylum policy and it's in chaos'. The Minister made a noise like a soul escaping the body. Perhaps it was his dignity making a final, Dunkirk-style evacuation because after this, he launched into the same old 'it's not our fault' spiel.
It's this familiar nonsense which we are so used to hearing from government ministers as the fruits of their own incompetence are presented to them, like one might present an uneaten dinner to a stubborn toddler or a recently discovered indoor mess to a recalcitrant pet.
'Do you think you're going to fulfil your election pledge to close asylum hotels?' asked Ms Barnett, in a tone which suggested she knew the answer already. Cue a bizarre directional waffle from Mr Jarvis, everything was going to happen 'up stream', 'in the round', 'at source' and 'at pace'. A sort of Hokey Cokey of incoherence.
However it is they decide on who goes out to bat first thing in the morning, I bet Mr Jarvis is praying it won't be him again.
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