We haven’t seen much of Andrew Mitchell since his recent promotion and today was perhaps a reminder why. For more than ten years, the onetime Chief Whip languished on the backbenches post-plebgate, until last October Sunak appointed him Minister of State for Development and Africa. It was Mitchell’s turn to do the government media round today but it proved to be a pretty tricky outing for the Old Rugbeian.
His trenchant criticisms of Boris Johnson’s policies came back to haunt him today when Mitchell was asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about his punchy past statements on the decision to cut Britain’s aid budget from 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income. Mitchell claimed that ‘collective responsibility fortunately is not retrospective’ before insisting that his job now is to ‘try and make the system work as well as possible’ and that the 0.7 figure’s return ‘cannot come soon enough.’
That interview was tricky enough for Mitchell but he really came unstuck later on Andrew Neil’s Channel 4 show. First, the broadcaster grilled him about his previous criticisms about Boris Johnson’s flagship Rwanda scheme. Mitchell was unable to fully back efforts to off shore migrants there and told Neil that the benefits would merely be ‘marginal’. And then, he had to concede that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights was not ‘on the table’ and is ‘not being seriously considered’ by the government.
Questioning whether the Rwanda scheme ‘is to have any benefit?’ Didn’t see that one on Rishi’s slick posters last year. Given Mitchell’s admirable commitment to producing news lines, let’s hope we don’t end up waiting another decade for his next government media round…
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