The last time Penny Mordaunt was publicly ridiculed live on ITV, she was at least there to defend herself. On that occasion, she was wearing a sequinned red one piece and had just ended her attempt at a backward somersault from 7.5 metres by splatting arse first in to the pool to a look of casual disdain from Tom Daley. But that is a crime eminently more forgivable in a cabinet minister than seemingly not knowing about the UK’s veto on EU accession.
If this is how Sunday mornings are going to work from now on, the price in untouched pastries will certainly be worth it. (On that front, spare a thought for poor Ed Balls. He was meant to be Chancellor by now. On Monday he had to do give a speech at Stansted airport next to George Osborne. And this morning ITV sat him in front of a tray of pain au chocolats and made him answer questions about the EU referendum. Not even the KGB up anything that cruel.)
09.30am: Government minister Mordaunt appears on Andrew Marr Show, makes dubious assertion that “I don’t think the UK will be able to stop Turking joining the EU.”
10.15am: Tieless Prime Minister appears on the altogether more casual Peston On Sunday, and breezily claims his own minister is “absolutely wrong.”
If nothing else, it’s certainly efficient. Civil servants are busy fretting about what to do when the House of Commons is soon forced to close for several years to stop it crumbling into the Thames. One hitherto unexplored option is to govern the land via the BBC and ITV’s rival Sunday morning sofas. How much more pleasant Prime Minister’s Questions might be if Jeremy Corbyn put all his questions to Andrew Marr, then David Cameron gave all his answers to Robert Peston, before launching straight into some idle chit chat with Lily Allen and David Baddiel.
By the way, the Prime Minister repeated his claim that Turkey’s membership of the EU is “not on the cards”, which to the novice ear does sound quite a bit like the Chancellor’s favourite claim that there are “no plans” for cuts to the welfare budget in this parliament. That Turkey joining the EU has been official government policy since at least the point at which Cameron went to Ankara in 2010 and gave a speech in favour of it, should at least be borne in mind when one comes to decide on the likelihood of that veto ever being deployed.
Cameron was there to put out the Remain camp’s line of the day. That Brexit would lead to a family spending £220 a year more on clothes and shopping. The battle lines are clear enough now. It’s migration versus the economy. And as the old saying goes, if you throw enough pain au chocolat, some of it sticks.
