WATCHING Kemi Badenoch from the House of Commons press gallery this week felt like being in the studio audience for a recording of a particularly unfunny episode of Have I Got News for You.
The Tory leader floundered from topic to topic – have you heard the one about the Chagos Islands? No? Well how about that Gerry Adams – like a fly buzzing over sliced meat at a deli counter.
The economy is tanking, the Government is spending taxpayers’ money to abandon the Chagos Islands, Labour are secretly in league with the IRA, she says. She’d prepared a script for the topical section of a right-wing pub quiz, not Prime Minister’s Questions.
She’s not easily put off talking rubbish. After a performance rated pretty universally as dismal, Badenoch managed to get back in the news this week by announcing that a future Tory government under her leadership would look at means-testing pensions.
Yes, despite pledging no new policies until at least 2027, Badenoch decided she just couldn’t help herself and has declared war on pensioners.
Labour often like to pat themselves on the back by lauding their own ability – if only the public were able to see how good and clever they are – to take “tough decisions”. Their version of this was to axe the universal Winter Fuel Payment.
Such was the rapture among the public after that “tough decision”, Badenoch seems to have decided she wanted a bit of that action and will do battle with people’s grannies.
READ MORE: Labour ‘doubling down’ on Tories’ mistakes on Brexit, Kemi Badenoch says
Problem is, people tend to quite like their grannies and don’t want them to be cold and poor, as one MP pointed out to me this week.
As for pensioners themselves, it is regarded as something of a golden rule in politics that you don’t touch the oldies. They are, after all, the ones who do most of the voting, newspaper buying and television news-watching in the country. Their opinions matter.
Unless… in a plan so crazy it might just work, Labour are now trying to blame the electorate for their problems in office.
(Image: Lucy North)
Westminster’s man in Scotland Ian Murray was actually in Scotland this week, though I suspect he might rather have been with the Prime Minister in Ukraine, where he could have expected a warmer reception.
While Murray was in Edinburgh, he was asked about why charts depicting Labour’s popularity were starting to look like a stock market crash.
His answer was one for the ages: “We were honest with the public back in July that it will be tough, maybe the public don’t like honesty after all.”
Labour’s apparent response to being about as popular as unflushable sick in a ScotRail toilet seems to be taking the fight to the electorate. “We thought you said you liked honesty, huh?”
It’s hard to say who has had a worse week but I think the real loser in all this is me for having to sit through an agonising clip of a BBC interview with Rachel Reeves, wherein the Chancellor reveals she takes her lunch to work with her in a Tupperware.
Quite what this is meant to tell us is beyond my analytical capabilities but I had to hear it so now you do too.
You can get the Worst of Westminster delivered straight to your email inbox at 6pm every Friday for FREE by clicking here.