Send out the search parties. Sound all the alarms. It’s been more than three weeks since Rishi Sunak called the general election and still no sightings of Jeremy Hunt. Just a couple of unconfirmed reports of a sad-looking man roaming the streets of Godalming with his dog, knocking on doors that never get opened. The sense of pathos is overwhelming. That such a titan should be reduced to near-invisibility.
You’d have thought that Sunak would have wanted the chancellor to be by his side for at least some of the campaign. The brains behind the economic miracle of the past two years. The man who has overseen a recession, a cheerleader for the current 0% growth. And when better than now to unleash him? The forensic economic mind to pick holes in the Labour manifesto.
It’s almost as if Rish! no longer has faith in his right-hand man, the linchpin of his cabinet. Has he begun to wonder if Jezza wasn’t the miracle worker he had led us to believe. Or maybe it’s Hunt’s own decision to make himself invisible. After years of cosplaying the role of chancellor, the strain has begun to take its toll. He can no longer maintain the pretence that he knows what he’s doing. When in truth he never had. He’s tested the pretence to self-destruction. Now he can scarcely raise his head from beneath the duvet. Either way, we should be concerned for his wellbeing. Pray for Jezza. A minute’s silence for the still-suffering Jeremy.
So this week it was left to Mark Harper to do the BBC and Sky Sunday politics shows. To which many will quite reasonably say: Mark who? What possible reason could the government have for sending out its transport secretary? Had potholes become the most pressing concern in the election? Or have we just reached the point in the campaign where Harper is the only member of the cabinet still willing to go out and defend the government? Were we all supposed to be grateful that we weren’t having to make do with Chris Philp?
Laura Kuenssberg and Trevor Phillips could barely contain their disappointment at having to interview someone who is anonymous to most and irrelevant to all. This is not to be harsh on Marky. He always comes across as one of the more decent, more personable of Tory politicians. It’s just that he’s both unremarkable and barely functioning.
The highlight of his career was standing for the leadership of the Tory party in 2019. He had just one campaign event: a speech in a tiny room in Westminster which drew an audience of 10. Of which I was one. Happy days. He was one of the first to be eliminated from the contest. No one could quite understand why he hadn’t been the first. Break out the champagne. It’s all been downhill from there onwards.
But the show had to go on. Laura and Trevor are nothing if not old pros, so if Mark was the man the Tories had put up, then Mark it had to be. Kuenssberg got things underway by observing that many Conservative candidates appeared to be embarrassed by their party’s brand. Andrea Jenkyns even featured a photo of her with Nigel Farage. Not at all, said Harper. This was all perfectly normal. Nige was an extremely handsome man.
“Isn’t it a bit desperate for the Tories to now be trying to terrify the electorate that Labour were on course to win 450 seats?” Laura continued. Mark shook his head. Every move CCHQ made was being done from a position of strength. All the Tories were interested in was making sure that voters got what they wanted. And if, as seemed likely, the electorate really did want to give Labour a supermajority, then that was fine by him. He wasn’t about to start quibbling.
Harper did want to make some claims about all the tax rises that Labour had already ruled out but which he suspected might be introduced anyway, but he was quickly reminded of his party’s own shortcomings in that area. The highest burden of tax since the 1940s. Marky looked crestfallen at this. It was almost as if this had come as a shock to him. Why had no one told him?
By the end of the 15-minute slot, Laura was almost beginning to feel sorry for Harper. No disrespect, she said. But can you explain why I am talking to a nonentity such as yourself? I got the feeling that she was also having the same feelings of anxiety – borderline panic – about the missing Jezza. Maybe he had been kidnapped. Presumably by CCHQ.
And what about Lord Big Dave? At this rate Cameron would have picked up a peerage for a couple of months’ first-class travel round the world. No one could think of any positive contribution he had made to anything as foreign secretary. Except looking like a shiny person. Couldn’t he defend Rish! at least once on the TV? Apparently not. Lord Big Dave has his limits. Marky just shrugged. He couldn’t help being so useless.
Phillips was every bit as brutal. Time and again, Harper urged Trevor to forget the past. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak had never really happened. We were living in the continuous present. Our minds are a tabula rasa to be rebooted with fresh nonsense every 30 seconds. Under Labour there would be endless tax rises. So much like the Tories then.
“I’m up for the fight,” said Marky. He didn’t look like it. He looked battered. A man who can’t wait for the election to be over. Voters were still undecided, he maintained. Undecided as to whether they merely dislike the Tories or whether they actively detest them. Somewhere in the depths of Harper’s psyche he knows that the game is up. He just hasn’t yet reached that higher level of consciousness.
Also on the morning shows was Labour’s Wes Streeting. One of the most exhausting politicians around. A man with the motormouth on speed dial. God knows what he would be like if he were on the same drugs as Michael Gove. Wes is not someone who is ever going to die wondering. He opens his mouth and the sentences are fired like machine-gun bullets. Shoot first, ask questions later.
Still, he’s an effective performer. If only because he doesn’t allow the interviewer to get a word in edgeways. Wes fired off his soundbites. Fully costed. Manifesto just an opening gambit. Growth would take us to sunlit uplands. Junior doctors’ strike bad. Don’t give the matches back to the arsonist. A point that Harper had also made. Albeit accidentally.
