The chief secretary to the Treasury seemingly got the short straw and had to defend the indefensible
Beggars can’t be choosers. This wasn’t the reckoning that some Tory MPs – 45 or so ordinary men and women with the crazy idea that the government should be accountable to parliament for breaking a manifesto commitment – had had in mind. But once the Speaker had, the previous day, snuffed out an attempt to force a meaningful vote on plans to reduce the UK’s overseas aid by 28%, from 0.7% to 0.5 of gross domestic income, they had been left with little other choice. An emergency debate with a token vote at the end – if anyone could be bothered – would have to do.
If Andrew Mitchell, the former secretary of state for international development and nominal leader of the rebel alliance, was disappointed at the downgrade to yesterday’s story, he didn’t let it show. There again, it’s not every day a politician gets to grab the moral high ground. He began by praising the speaker for one of the “strongest statements from the chair” that he had ever heard the previous day.
