BBC Question Time audience really gave minister Nigel Huddleston a grilling over the Conservative Party’s record last night.
The financial secretary to the Treasury featured on the panel in Stoke-on-Trent and – ended up defending the government’s record while the audience laughed...
One member of the crowd said: “I’m sorry – half of what you said doesn’t make sense.”
He continued: “We gave Boris Johnson a chance, he lied. We gave Liz Truss a chance, she trashed the economy, now we’ve got an unelected prime minister.
“We just want a general election and we want it now, please.”
There was a robust round of applause at that.
Rishi Sunak has repeatedly refused to confirm when the next general election will be – and the current parliament does not have to be dissolved until December.
The crowd expressed their frustration over the levelling-up funds (£56m) meant to be improving their area, too, especially after so many development plans have been shelved.
When Huddleston said, “these things take time, there’s no doubt about it,” the audience laughed, and one person shouted: “You’ve had 14 years!”
The minister ignored that and said lots of the funding is “in process” with projects and initiatives in the works.
Another person told Huddleston it was all “too little too late” for the Tories to act after many projects, like HS2, have been scrapped.
Huddleston was also thrashed over the last question of the night, about funding for the NHS.
A member of the audience said: “It’s rich to say about the level of investment – if you wanted to invest you would have done it over 14 years, not just now.
“The levels you’re putting in are not appropriate to the amount of damage that has been done.”
The minister replied: “There’s more doctors, nurses and investment in the NHS than ever before.”
But the audience member cut in: “It’s not effective. Lived experience of people in the NHS is not what you are saying it is and that’s what people are suffering with.”
The government has long been accused of failing to deliver on the health promises made in the 2019 manifesto, and this is expected to be a major sticking point in the upcoming election.