How election campaign revealed Tory and SNP leaders to be wilfully stupid politicians

At times, it could have been a bizarre performance art project rather than a general election campaign. The past six weeks (not, as it seems, months) have seen experienced and extremely senior politicians reveal (or, if you prefer, confirm) themselves to be idiots.

Perhaps the stupidest act by any key player was the calling of an election in the first place. Rishi Sunak could, as many of his colleagues would have liked, hung on for a few months in the hope that improving interest rates or something – anything – might have shifted his party’s woeful position in election polls. Instead, he surprised even allies with his decision.

This led some Tory MPs to brief that the uber-rich Prime Minister was so out of touch that he hadn’t given a thought to the many people – politicians and staff, alike – who were going to lose their jobs sooner than they had to.

Rishi Sunak wasn't singing in the rain, but calling an election (Picture: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images)

There is no pleasure to be taken from the premature and inevitable redundancies of political staffers, many of whom will have done excellent, perhaps life-changing work, over the years, but perhaps, like me, you found Conservative MPs muttering about anyone being out of touch just a bit rich. Much like the Prime Minister.

Defence of Matheson

But if it looked like Sunak was in a class of his own when it came misjudging a campaign, John Swinney had thoughts of his own. The First Minister launched the SNP’s pitch to voters with a remarkable – indeed, still baffling – defence of Michael Matheson, the former Health Secretary sanctioned for abusing his expenses. Matheson claimed £11,000 for mobile data run up on a parliament-provided iPad by his sons while watching football matches during a family holiday and then lied about the circumstances.

This was a story with what politicians fear – “cut through”. People who might not normally engage with political news damned well engaged with the Matheson story and Swinney’s decision to spend much of the first day of the campaign trying to undermine the process which saw a cross-party group of MSPs recommend the former Cabinet Secretary’s suspension from Holyrood for 27 days and the docking of 54 days’ pay.

Polling by YouGov had already revealed not only that Scots knew about and disapproved of Matheson’s behaviour but that two thirds thought he should resign over it – not just from government but as an MSP – so Swinney gave the impression that he didn’t care about his friend’s actions.

Offensively self-defeating

Not one to be outdone in the bewildering stupidity takes, the Prime Minister went to on to do something that will go down in history as one of the most offensively self-defeating acts of any politician in a major campaign.

Sunak’s decision to leave D-Day commemorations in Normandy early in order to get back to Blighty for a telly interview remains firmly in the “he did WHAT?” category and will do forever more.

After years of political turmoil, perhaps it is fitting that the general election campaign has been so very chaotic. Few of us have any great hopes for sudden change under a new government but an end to acts of wilful stupidity would be a good start.