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Why did the Transport Secretary know about it yesterday?

It's important that the government, excuse me, it's very important that government acts on concerns

here. Sorry, is this some sort of joke?

I mean, how can you possibly have as a number one priority

cutting the deficit when you choose to spend and underspend in funding a tax cut?

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think, my God, what am I going to be told today? I wake up in the morning and know actually that some of my constituents will really value

not having to pay that little bit more on fuel prices come August.

You ever think you're incompetent?

I think it's valuable to help real people in this way and I do think that is valued by people who drive. It feels for good or ill like we've come up a long way from that.

Jeremy Paxman, savaging then junior minister Chloe Smith on Newsnight back in 2011,

a world away from ministers, even willing to be interviewed on shows like Newsnight regularly,

taking the sort of aggression that Paxman

employed against Smith. Ministers these days often just back away. How often now do we hear the phrase,

we ask for a minister, but no one was available. Prime ministers do fewer and fewer interviews too.

Rishi Sunak did a couple this week in fairness, but he doesn't much care for them, clearly.

His awkward

LBC exchanges yesterday, his terse chat with Good Morning Scotland earlier in the week. Part of a

prime ministerial diary done, you get the sense with dread rather than relish. We're about a year

away from a general election. This summer being Westminster's last real breath, drop in pulse before the countdown starts.

And yet, in Rishi Sunak and Kirstama, we have two political principles who in so many ways

...