UK Covid Inquiry: Alister Jack's attack on Nicola Sturgeon's tears was cynical and crass – Aidan Smith

When Nicola Sturgeon became emotional at the Covid Inquiry, she showed that, like the rest of us, she’s a human being

What do we expect from the Rishi Sunak profile on ITV on Thursday, the one being trailed as “capturing him up close and personal as never before”? What do we want from it? Something to match last week’s big reveal? I’m not sure that’s possible. Rishi doesn’t eat from 5pm on Sundays until 5am on Tuesdays! This is why he has a 20in waist, buys his trousers from Mattel and must stay well clear of drains!

The PM’s fasting regime was, as it were, the takeaway. It put all the Dry January boasters firmly in the shade. Expense-account journos immediately set about trying to match his self-denial with tremulous dispatches from their kitchens, very nearly claiming the equivalent stress levels of war correspondents.

No celeb interview was complete without a question concerning food and willpower (Frances Barber, Jeanette Winterson). So after all that, surely Armando Iannucci must be contemplating a revival of his excoriating political satire for election year, only retitled The Thin of It.

Rishi Sunak takes Anushka Asthana to his football team's home ground for an interview billed as a revealing portrait of the PM. (Picture: ITV)

No, I’m not expecting many surprises from the ITV programme. Despite their deputy political editor, Anushka Asthana, being able to tag along with Sunak for three months, this type of show rarely delivers. It’s not always the inquisitor’s fault. Politicians at Sunak’s level are practised at retaining ownership of the agenda, whether it’s three months or a three-minute soundbite, and they have black arts back-up of their comms teams to ensure this. Access is not what it was.

Sunak’s skinny trousers

And yet politicians will always submit to these “revealing portraits”. Why? The reasons are manifold and vanity is definitely one, though probably not the main driver in Sunak’s case. He’s simply desperate. Way behind in the polls. Leading – just about – a party which is trying to eat itself. Perceived as being too rich and therefore, it surely follows, out of touch. He has to let the cameras in. To shift the debate. For – hopefully – a grown-up, long-trousered study that’s less about the £529 million he’s worth and his trousers being so super-skinny and more about how he’s a decent guy doing his best for the country and, hey, that he’s human.

This is something often forgotten about politicians but possibly not in the last few days. For, at the same time as Mike Freer, the UK justice minister, was admitting he’s had enough of the death threats, being forced to wear a stab-vest when out and about in his constituency, and his office suffering an arson attack, Nicola Sturgeon went before the Covid inquiry and cried.

For this, she was condemned. Alister Jack, the Tories’ Scottish Secretary, basically accused her of turning on the tears for effect. “I think Nicola Sturgeon could cry from one eye if she wanted to,” he claimed.

Now, I count myself as one of the SNP’s disappointed and disillusioned. I’ve voted for the party consistently since they ended lazy Labour’s rule in Scotland, but for a number of reasons, and for the time being at least, have cancelled my subscription. That, though, was contemptuous from Jack. Cynical and crass and another example of how it’s become all too easy to dehumanise politicians.

Cheapest of shots

Sturgeon made mistakes and admitted as much. The pandemic overwhelmed everyone whose job it was to find a way through it, and Boris Johnson, tearful himself at the inquiry, more than most. Without wishing to contradict my own argument, Jack, in representing a party who will never hold power here, had it somewhat easier than Scotland’s First Minister. Sturgeon may well have been crying in part for the end of her career but to infer she could not be regretful or saddened by the devastation wreaked by Covid was the cheapest of shots and there’s been Conservative criticism of his remarks.

Politicians are viewed as fair game. Much of the slagging they get is thoroughly deserved as this is not a golden era for them. On the most recent edition of Radio 4’s The News Quiz, Sturgeon was cued up for more pot-shots and duly received them until Asthana, a guest panellist, interjected.

Sturgeon breaking down, she said, was “a moment of humanity” and it would be good if there was wider acknowledgement that occasionally mucking up was a very human trait. She earned applause for that until host Andy Zaltzman returned the show to its traditional raucousness by quipping: “In the interests of balance, we should point out that not all politicians are human…”

Rock music writer’s genius

So we come back to the Prime Minister whose hopes of demonstrating his human side in “Rishi Sunak – Up Close” would seem to rest with him cheering on his football team, Southampton, and the revelation he sometimes breaks his fasting by nibbling on a Twix.

As I say, I’m ready to be underwhelmed and it’s at moments like these when I wish that Tom Hibbert was still around. The rock music journalist who really didn’t like much rock music interviewed many of the great and the good beyond it, often leaving them looking pompous and pretentious. His genius, as a new collection of his witty, waspish, Wodehousian writing, Phew, Eh Readers? (Nine Eight Books), reminds us, was a gently ruthless technique.

It was entrapment by flattery, leaving silences for his subjects to fill with, for example “I’m certainly one of the best five composers since the Second World War” (Roger Waters) and “I’m a great capitalist pig – so what?” (Gary Numan). In 1987 Margaret Thatcher, seeking reelection and keen for the youth vote, invited Hibbert to 10 Downing Street so she could address the readers of Smash Hits, revealing her admiration for never-hip Cliff Richard, Eurovision bozos Brotherhood of Man and – her favourite song – “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” See? Maggie was human after all…