Some people seem to make a career of being ashamed (or at least claiming to be ashamed) of their country. Personally I don’t feel it – apart from when I see journalists from the BBC, ITV or Sky questioning our political leaders while they are abroad. Then a great wave of revulsion and national shame surges within me.
It happened last weekend when Rishi Sunak was at the G7 summit in Japan. These meetings of the world’s leading economies are pretty important affairs, so much so that major media organisations fly journalists out to cover them. But as Sunak and his hosts stood to answer questions about the summit, what did the best sleuths from the BBC and ITV see fit to quiz him about? Why, Suella Braverman and her speeding awareness course.
This scandal that has allegedly shocked even the most hardened Westminster hacks involves the fact that the Home Secretary apparently once drove above the speed limit. This is something no hack, archbishop or leader of the opposition would ever do. As a result the Home Secretary was required to either pay a fine or attend one of those lessons in how not to speed.
It’s not as though there is any shortage of actual issues that our Prime Minister could be asked about
Being Home Secretary it could be awkward for Braverman to go to a class with her fellow offenders. This era being what it is, everybody present would probably get out their mobile phones, film her on the naughty step and give the news cycle another day of fascinating headlines. Expecting this, the Home Secretary reportedly asked an aide if she could do the course in a more secluded environment, something which plenty of other high-profile people have apparently already done. That is the story. In its entirety.
Yet Labour are trying to make this into the latest political scandal to rock the government.
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