McNulty survives the Newsnight ambush

A great edition of Newsnight tonight, featuring an ambush of employment minister Tony McNulty in an empty, echoing Birmingham factory. McNulty had been characteristically honest by saying that things are likely to get worse before they get better. Paxman was right to remind Theresa May that there are still a million fewer people unemployed than under the last Tory government. She didn’t have an answer for that.

Yet that’s no consolation for those people who are losing their jobs right now. But the real point is that this recession is hitting very quickly. Unless the government acts quickly then redundancies will already have been made and it will be too late.

And then came psychologist Oliver James. I can only assume this will become a YouTube moment. It’s difficult to capture the intensity of James’s anger in a blog post but in essence he suggested that McNulty and May should hang their heads in shame for their role in what he called “Blatcherism”.