Politics

"I can’t stop reading this speech by Oliver Dowden. It really is the most idiotic thing I’ve seen for a while."

“Unless urgent steps are taken to address this, we will see very small numbers of people taking up this offer and a lot of the public’s generosity squandered," the Labour shadow secretary said.

It comes as Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed the government parties allegedly held during Covid restrictions are “disproportionate fluff” and “fundamentally trivial”.

“Now is the time to end the culture of self-doubt, the constant self-questioning and introspection, the ludicrous debates about language, statues and pronouns," she said.

“I don’t think those two situations are directly analogous, clearly they are not directly analogous and I don’t think the prime minister was saying that they were directly analogous," the chancellor said.

"She tries to join in the chant of 'shame on you' before realising it's aimed at her. Lovely stuff," one Twitter user noted.

"To compare a referendum to women and children fleeing Putin's bombs is an insult to every Ukrainian. He is no Churchill: he is Basil Fawlty."

The former PM posted a picture of himself at a food project in west Oxfordshire where he said he had been volunteering for two years at.

Oliver Dowden said the Tories will portray opposition leader Keir Starmer as “dull … uninspiring … and bereft of ideas”.