by Kevin Meagher
My Mum’s informal media monitoring service is always spot on.
‘They had some treasury minister on with Ed Balls this morning,’ she told me the other day.
‘She was absolutely hopeless. He made mincemeat out of her.’
Turns out the hapless victim of Ed Balls’s perfectly reasonable probing about the inflation rate was treasury minister, Laura Trott, putting in yet another faltering media appearance to add to the long, painful, list of similarly egregious examples.
I have these conversations with my Mum every day.
One hopeless minister after another does the media round, only to be pulled apart by interviewers like a French baguette.
There was a vintage example on Sky News.
James Daly, the deputy Tory party chairman, who made the police complaint about Angela Rayner’s disputed household arrangements, was on.
Labour’s Chris Bryant asked – again, perfectly reasonably – what he thought she had done wrong.
Presenter Kay Burley and Political Editor Beth Rigby, also part of the discussion, echoed the point.
Now, this was the most obvious thing in the world to ask him. Daly – badly briefed, panicky and defensive – floundered, accusing Bryant of shouting at him.
It seems to happen time and again.
Obvious questions that Tory frontbenchers should be prepared for leave them pole-axed.
It’s an excruciating sight and sound, as the life-force oozes out of this government on what is now a daily basis.
