Lisa Nandy’s media-round sounds like the sort of thing you might be signed up to if you failed to make the cut as a Newsround Press Packer. Unfortunately for us, it’s actually a key part of the government’s comms strategy as the Culture Secretary was sent out on to the airwaves this morning. Inevitably she was asked about the Piddington fiasco. The government is ‘listening’ to villagers in Piddington, purred Nandy, but is ‘not going to change our plans’. Nothing shows you’re ‘listening’ to people quite like doing the exact opposite of what they’re asking you to do.

This sort of passive-aggressive language is what we’ve come to expect from Labour ministers

This sort of passive-aggressive language is what we’ve come to expect from Labour ministers

Nandy said it wasn’t fair that asylum seekers have mainly been housed in poor areas until now, adding: ‘I would just gently say we are all going to have to do our bit’. This sort of passive-aggressive language is what we’ve come to expect from Labour ministers every time someone quite reasonably brings up the insanity of the status quo. There is nothing ‘just gently’ about forcing a village of 356 people to absorb 1,250 male migrants. Moreover, why does anyone ‘have to do their bit’ on widely unpopular illegal migration? Making it sound like ‘Clap for Carers’........

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