By the end of the vaccines minister Maggie Throup’s Commons performance we knew less than we had at the start
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman. There’s a fair chance you haven’t heard of Maggie Throup. There again, there’s a fair chance that Maggie Throup hasn’t heard of Maggie Throup. She’s that forgettable, even her shadow disowns her. She has the permanently bemused air of someone harmless who is never quite sure why she happens to be in any one place at any one time or what she’s supposed to be doing there. Someone who would be out of her depth in a teacup. And yet, for reasons no one has as yet determined, she is the UK’s new vaccines minister during the worst public health crisis in 100 years.
Still, her complete unsuitability for the job made her the ideal health minister for Sajid Javid to send out to take the flak for him by answering Labour’s urgent question on the Covid pandemic. After all, the less she knew, the less chance of her accidentally revealing something potentially embarrassing. Like the fact that the health secretary hadn’t seemed entirely sure what government policy was during his press conference the day before. The Saj messing things up was not a great look. The Throupster sounding confused was no more than what most people anticipated. Expectation management and all that.
