Rishi Sunak has finally found a Tory MP that even GB News doesn’t like
As Britain took down the coronation bunting, and the police let the republicans out of jail, Rishi relaunched the Tory Party by returning to home turf. A photo shoot at a pharmacy in Southampton. I don’t know if you knew this but the PM grew up in an NHS family, and this story is so fundamental to his life experience that it’s emerging as the central plank in Conservative Party policy. Today Rishi wants chemists to prescribe antibiotics; tomorrow they will be able to deliver babies in Boots. Just drop your wife off and she should be ready for collection in about an hour.
If this is the big idea then you need a big man to sell it, but the media round on day one of the great fightback went to Neil O’brien, which was self-defeating in some key respects. First, he’s Neil O’brien. Softly-spoken, faintly menacing, he has one of those smiles that when the photographer says, “Smile please,” he replies through gritted teeth “I am smiling”. I don’t envy him having to discuss “impetigo” and “sinusitis” on a dozen broadcasters; his “urinary tract” got tongue tied on Good Morning Britain. But whatever Spad was following him around the studios must have been tearing their hair out at his cold manner. Never mind animation; our minister for health appears reanimated.
“You promised 6,000 new GPS”, BBC Breakfast reminded him, so where are they? “We do have 2,000 more doctors,” said O’brien; and the discrepancy was spotted and pointed out. The Today programme stuck the knife in, surgically, by noting that allowing pharmacists to diagnose colds is a drop in the ocean considering the enormous backlog facing the NHS. And how, pray, did that come about?
Here’s my thought for the day. Britain had something called a lockdown: that’s why the NHS is on its knees. A handful of people at the time dared to ask if the policy was going to work; Mr O’brien took huge pleasure in shooting them down, no doubt intimidating some into silence. He set up a sinister website dedicated to criticising dissenters, making him a hero among authoritarians. O’brien told broadcasters that police had done a good job over the weekend. You can tell this is a man who thinks we should put anyone on a skateboard into protective custody.
Of course, Britain has decided it doesn’t want to relitigate lockdown; we’re just going to pretend it didn’t happen. So as various media outlets pick up on the mess we’re now in, without properly examining why, there was guilty pleasure in watching O’brien try to sell an unconvincing remedy (create an army of chemists to fight tonsillitis on the beaches) that no one has faith will even happen.
“We’ve covered similar stories like this almost every year since time immemorial,” said Isabel Webster of GB News: Boris said he’d do it, then Liz, now Rishi – so isn’t this just a lazy rehash? Yikes! Neil O’brien might be the first Tory MP that even GB News doesn’t like, which is quite an achievement. Half the backbenchers are on the payroll.