Jon Sopel tears into Labour in brutal Question Time assault | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Jon Sopel tore right into a Cabinet minister over Labour’s newest U-turn on native elections in a Question Time conflict. The journalist and podcast host prompted applause from the viewers as he criticised the Government’s “political ineptitude” amid repeated reversals regardless of Sir Keir Starmer’s enormous majority.

The second got here because the BBC programme debated whether or not U-turns are a superb factor or an indication of weak spot. Turning to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander, Mr Sopel stated: “It just seems to me that you’ve got a massive majority and yet when it was personal independence payments it was political ineptitude that you just could not get that through the House of Commons and you had to back down on it when you’ve got a majority that most other Governments in history would have dreamt of having.

“Yet you have needed to climbdown time and again, this week over the elections whenever you received authorized recommendation that was out of the blue unhealthy for you.

“Why didn’t you take the legal advice in the first place then you wouldn’t have had the embarrassment of having to do that and then back down?”

Ms Alexander relied: “When it comes to the decision on local elections we did get updated legal advice.

“And if it was a alternative between a messy, costly course of by way of the courts or taking the choice now to provide readability to these 30 or so councils who had come to make use of as a result of they are going by way of native authorities reorganisation and who stated there’s numerous time and expense of organising elections this 12 months…”

Pressed by host Fiona Bruce on why the Government did not get that legal advice in the first place, the Labour politician added: “As a Government minister among the time recommendation is up to date and you’ll both select to disregard it or you possibly can select to behave on it.”

Ballots for 30 councils in England had been postponed as a part of Labour’s reorganisation of native authorities.

But they had been reinstated on Monday amid a authorized problem from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.