As Labour’s new shadow City Minister, Richard Burgon will be hoping to prove that his party isn’t as anti-business as they were seen to be in the last election. Alas, his interview with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 news last night will have done little to help his cause.
Burgon — who was one of the MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership election — struggled during the interview in which he tried to defend John McDonnell over his fiscal charter U-turn:
‘If people don’t change their view when further evidence comes before them then they’ve got some tough questions to answer. Labour is an anti-austerity party. This is a political stunt by George Osborne.’
Newman then went on to quiz Burgon on when Labour would eliminate the deficit while remaining an anti-austerity party. Unfortunately it became clear that Burgon was numerically challenged when it came to the deficit:
CN: You say you’re not a deficit denier so what is the deficit going to be this year?
RB: Well… err… I’m not an economic… I’m not somebody who is going to put a figure in a crystal ball of what exactly the deficit is going to be in a year
CN: Well you don’t need a crystal ball, it’s in the government’s figures
RB: I think it will be higher than the government says it’s going to be
Things then took a turn for the worse when Burgon was asked about his new shadow cabinet role. When pressed by Newman, he had to admit that he was yet to arrange meetings with City workers on the square mile:
RB: I’ve got a very busy diary as you can imagine
CN: Too busy to meet city representatives?
RB: No, I’ll be meeting representatives and I’ll be interested to hear their views on what’s going on
While Corbynistas did not take well to Newman’s line of questioning, taking to Twitter to call her a Tory stooge, others were so unimpressed with his performance that they edited Burgon’s Wikipedia page. His introduction now includes mention of the interview, describing it to be ‘universally considered as piss-poor’.
Still, Mr S can’t help but wonder if Burgon has just been watching episodes of The Thick of It for too long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huqUZdG-_SM
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