Why is Mel Stride always doing the broadcast round?

It’s a day ending in ‘y’, so it must be time for Mel Stride to make one of his appearances on the broadcast round. Stride is one of the few ministers who have been prepared to go out and about for the Tories during this campaign, alongside Grant Shapps. They seem to perform slightly different functions. Shapps will walk into the studios with a striking warning about how badly the election is going for the Tories, while Stride is the genial character who tries to mollify everyone and exit the interview without creating any news. 

This morning, Stride’s job was to try to move on from the gambling row. He expressed Rishi Sunak’s ‘anger’ about the allegations that some candidates used inside information to bet on the election date, and told Times Radio:

I know he has been thoroughly angered by the whole situation. Because as I say, this is taking up now a lot of airtime.