During today’s Sunday Politics programme, we get little in the way of solving an NHS crisis from either of the two biggest parties – but an abundance of hopelessly loyal Nadine Dorries still defending Boris Johnson. What more could we possibly expect?
Nadine the irony queen
BBC News this morning once again shone as a beacon of excellent interview sourcing with one of today’s guests, errr… Nadine Dorries
The former Culture Secretary and current GB News rent-a-gob scolded Philip Schofield over his abuse of “authority, power and trust”, after he lied about an affair with a young colleague.
As the topic shifted to Boris Johnson’s further potential rule breaches during the Covid pandemic, however, she suddenly remembered she was a politician and went back on the defensive, playing a blinder of a non sequitur.
Despite suggesting Philip Schofield’s ‘grovelling apology’ would not be enough to prevent further scrutiny, when it came to probing Johnson’s lockdown diaries, she said: “The only people acting inappropriately and making false claims are those who have sent these diaries off to the police.”
Clearly, Johnson’s grovelling “I misled parliament but not on purpose” defence was enough for Dorries.
Let’s also not forget that Dorries, who said there were questions for ITV bosses and his co-host Holly Willoughby to answer, is the same Nadine Dorries who called Johnson’s Covid Privileges Committee “an unwarranted kangaroo court”.
When asked about her potential peerage she said: “I don’t expect anything in this life, I’ll just take anything that comes my way.”…Dorries may just be entering her live, laugh, love, backbencher era.
Labour vs Tories on NHS: two interviews that quickly went from cradle to grave
Bluster and sloganism were the running theme throughout interviews with Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, and Health Secretary, Steve Barclay – by Laura Kuenssberg.
Ashworth says his party has a “really detailed plan” for how to deal with issues in the health service. Very convincing.
He added that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt previously backed Labour’s plans, but had since changed his mind. So, it could be worse but we are none the wiser or more confident – classic Starmerism.
Barclay was, of course, no better and started out by refuting the claim the Conservatives had not built 40 “new” hospitals as promised in the 2019 manifesto. He eventually admitted the pledge in fact meant a “range” of schemes. As Incel King Jordan Peterson would say, “well, it depends what you mean by hospital”.