Chuka Umunna’s fit of pique at the end of his Sky interview was unnecessary. One of the skills of a politician who fancies being a leader is to look calm and reasonable in the face of unreasonable questions.
But to be fair to Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, there is nothing wrong with refusing to comment on something you don’t know enough about. There’s something very off-putting and insincere about a politician who blags their way through an interview or panel session like an English student pontificating their way through a seminar on a book they never bothered to read. He could have read those detailed media briefings that Labour sends out every day, but I know very few Labour MPs who read them all as they are just so detailed.
The problem – and I suspect this was the frustration that Dermot Murnaghan was expressing in his interview – is that politicians who have read the letter or the news story or whatever political hot potato they are being asked about tend to claim they haven’t as a way of wriggling out of commenting on the matter.
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