Well, that was fun. For an hour tonight Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss danced across a smorgasbord of political issues while the BBC’s Chris Mason and Sophie Raworth demanded to know about a Boris Johnson comeback and, er, Claire’s Accessories. There was, as usual, more heat than light but Truss’s praise for Sunak’s alma mater Winchester College as a ‘very, very good school’ probably cost her Jacob Rees-Mogg’s vote.
One key exchange came on China, when the Foreign Secretary was asked if she would support a crackdown on popular viral video app TikTok. The ties between its parent company ByteDance and Beijing have been much criticised in recent years. Truss replied that: ‘We absolutely should be cracking down on those types of companies’.
It’s somewhat awkward then that one of Truss’s most vocal supporters is Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, a keen TikTok user. As journalist Chris Stokel-Walker pointed out, Dorries in fact uploaded her last TikTok video – a clip of her celebrating the UK hosting Eurovision – less than 12 hours ago. Given her love of all things online, the former health minister may now have to choose between her support for her candidate or her penchant for TikTok clips.
After all, if TikTok is indeed the ‘type of company’ which the UK should be cracking down on, why should it remain on the phone of a Cabinet minister?
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