Minister blames death total on ageing population and obesity crisis before abruptly ending ITV call
Thérèse Coffey is normally a glass half-full kind of minister. Sent out to do the media round on Monday morning, she even managed to claim to LBC’s Nick Ferrari that getting just 1,868 young people – out of a targeted 120,000 – starting roles on the government’s kickstarter scheme had “actually been a huge success”. I hate to think what a massive failure might look like.
But even the work and pensions secretary struggled when she came up against Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Having first delivered the classic line that “the best way to tackle this virus is to avoid contracting it in the first place” – no shit – Coffey made the elementary error of giving a direct answer to a direct question.
