Gove’s ‘bodies pile high’ non-denial

This afternoon’s urgent question on allegations of Tory sleaze could have been a rather explosive affair. Instead, it was used by members of all parties to produce a series of rather rubbish slogans for the local and devolved assembly elections next month. The Conservatives wanted to deflect attention from their problems by complaining about a series of things: that the other parties were bad too, that voters didn’t care about this stuff anyway, and that the government was being criticised for trying too hard in the pandemic. Labour and the SNP wanted to nail the Tories and produce similar clips for their campaigns, and the Lib Dems had a number of targets, including the SNP.

Michael Gove had turned up to answer SNP MP Alison Thewliss’s question by assuring everyone that the government was doing the right thing, that a new independent adviser on ministerial interests would shortly be appointed, that the Prime Minister had paid for the refurbishment of his flat out of his own pocket, and that procurement of PPE and the ventilator challenge had necessarily been fast in order to make sure the country’s hospitals were as well-supplied as possible.