Chloe Smith was bad, and so was Jeremy Paxman

Poor Chloe Smith. First she must endure knowing that many of her colleagues in the Conservative party will have enjoyed seeing her flayed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel Four News and then, later yesterday evening, by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. Smith can’t have enjoyed either interview. Then again, she can’t have enjoyed being sent out to bat without a bat either. Odd, isn’t it, that when the government has something especially incoherent to sell that that senior ministers are unavailable to defend the government line? So Smith was handed the Black Spot and told to do her best.

That best wasn’t very good, of course. The government’s argument for abandoning the planned rise in petrol duty is pretty flimsy in all but one respect: it is probably pretty popular. Smith might have made more of that. She could also have said that, look, £500m sounds like a lot of money but it is roughly 0.07