Our political editor, WALTER CRONXITE, reports on a Croydon politician’s televised African problem
There were genuine concerns among Croydon Tories last night, after the recording of this week’s episode of the BBC’s Question Time programme in north London, that Croydon South MP Chris Philp might struggle to find his way from Tottenham all the way to Coulsdon.
Questioned time: Chris Philp is a Oxford-educated Conservative government minister
Philp, a cheerleader for “Thick Lizzy” Truss when she was the country’s disastrous and most short-lived Prime Minister, has made a career out of being a media punch bag for his Conservative government’s unpopular and controversial policies, appearing on TV and radio to take blow after blow of criticism without ever a flinch.
The Croydon MP, remember, was once subjected to a barrage of accusations of lying on national television by rail union chief Mick Lynch. It was like water off a duck’s back for Philp, who appeared impervious to the charges.
His devotion to Conservative duty has earned Philp the tag “a nose in search of a bum”, according to Grauniad sketchwriter John Crace.
But last night, in a few brief minutes on QT, Philp “jumped the shark”, quickly becoming a meme and a national laughing stock, all at the same time.
An arse in search of an atlas.
This was how the far-right Torygraph reported the always robotic Philp’s latest claim to unwanted notoriety:
The jokes keep coming: Chris Philp’s last known whereabouts are not known
“Policing minister Chris Philp appeared to confuse the countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Question Time.
“Responding to an audience member’s question during the BBC One programme, the MP for Croydon South seemed to ask whether ‘Rwanda is a different country to Congo’.
“The audience member, who said he came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, asked: ‘Had my family members come from Goma [a city on the country’s border] on a crossing right now, would they then be sent back to the country they are supposedly warring – Rwanda?
“’Does that make any sense to you?’
“Mr Philp replied: ‘No, I think there’s an exclusion on people from Rwanda being sent to Rwanda.
“After the audience member objected that his parents were ‘not from Rwanda’, the Conservative MP appeared to ask: ‘Well, I mean, Rwanda is a different country to Congo isn’t it?
“’It’s a different country?'”
And in typically Torygraph understatement, they added: “The comment caused a short outburst of laughter from some members of the debate programme’s audience.”
The laughter has barely stopped today, as people catch up with the latest dropped bollock by a sorry excuse for a government minister.
In an effort to save some face, “an ally of Mr Philp”, as described by a BBC report, “suggested the minister had been posing a rhetorical question, rather than a real one”. Oh yeah…
Philp is far from the first Tory politician to make themselves appear like a thick pillock. Truss herself didn’t know the difference between the Baltic and the Black Sea. And she was Foreign Secretary at the time. Therese Coffey thought Kigali was a country. It is the captial city of Rwanda.
And this is far from the first time that Philp has been skewered by his own ineptitude on national television. The thing is: why did he bother? Why defend the indefensible?
From a government that has delivered up serial crocks of shit as legislation, the Rwanda Bill is the shittiest crock of shit going. The panel of experienced judges in the Supreme Court declared Rwanda to be an “unsafe” country. This law seeks to rule that Rwanda is a “safe” country. Philp and this Tory government passed the Rwanda Bill into law this week.
Rwanda remains etched on many people’s memories because of the genocidal civil war waged by the country’s government on ordinary Rwandans for four years in the early 1990s. That war spilled out and affected neighbouring countries in central Africa, and made tens of thousands of people refugees.
Laugh a minute: the Chris Philp gags might dry up sometime in the next six months
Much in the region remains unresolved and uncertain. Rwanda certainly does not have a clean bill of health as far as its more recent human rights record is concerned.
As the Torygraph puts it: “There has been a long history of violent conflict between the neighbouring African countries.”
But Rwanda is coining it, making millions from Britain’s Tory government, who are paying a possible £500million for the central African state to take, at most, a couple of hundred refugees.
Apparently, the Tories’ candidate for London Mayor, Susan Hall (who?), is a big fan…
Read more: Taxing questions on business for Philp the parachutist
Read more: Croydon South’s Tory MP called a ‘liar’ 16 times on national TV
Read more: MP Philp: ‘Brown-nosing is first, second and third nature’
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