A press conference at Tory HQ at least had some entertainment value even if there was nothing of importance to say
There was a time when you knew where you were with a press conference. You would go along on the assumption that the person or organisation who had called it had something important to say. Something that might approximate to news.
But we live in ever more confusing days. So now we’ve reached the point where Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride will do almost anything for attention. Where a press conference is just another excuse for a therapy session where they can unload their familiar grievances on to journalists. It’s the only way they can get anyone to listen.
Mind you, a Kemi press conference – even a meta one – is never without its entertainment value. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Tuesday’s invitation to Conservative campaign headquarters in Westminster was devised purely for the benefit of sketch writers. Or maybe it was one of the Tory party’s better April fool gags. In either case, a big thank you.
“The cost of living has become unbearable,” Kemi began. The inference was that everything had been tickety-boo up until the election last year. Back in the halcyon days of the Tory government, everyone was awash with money. Or maybe not. Badenoch did not seem in any hurry to examine her party’s legacy. The past is a foreign country.
Then to the details. Such as they were. Labour’s increase in national insurance contributions for businesses – “Labour’s job tax” – was going to make every family £3,500 worse off.
Stride would be telling us how this figure was arrived at later, she added. At which point you knew the £3.5k was entirely fictitious. Something that an intern had come up with on the back of an envelope. Mel is a decent man, but he can barely operate a contactless debit card. Quite how he’s ended up as shadow chancellor is a mystery to him as well as us.
Kemi hadn’t quite finished though. She raced through all the price increases coming into effect on Tuesday.
