UK
Rishi Sunak laughs at GP joke as heckler says NHS is ‘disintegrating’
A chaotic end to a chaotic day
A chaotic end to a chaotic day for the Tory campaign.
Public engagements can be risky at the best of times, never mind when you are trailing badly in the polls with four weeks until voting day.
You would have hoped a somewhat closed-off event for Tory members in the safe Wiltshire countryside might have passed off without any bother.
Not so – on what turned into Rishi Sunak’s worst day of the campaign so far.
As it turned out, the subject being raised by the heckler was quite specific and certainly not a cut and dry dressing down of the broad Tory record on the NHS.
The prime minister’s response – while a little robotic – was characteristically detailed and fluent.
Yes, at one point he laughed – but only when another man interrupted to say GPs spent “more time on holiday than in the surgery”.
Some in the crowd cheered at Rishi Sunak’s response, while others were clearly angry at the attention being sucked up by one lone woman.
The heckler later told reporters she was still a Tory member and had not ruled out voting conservative.
At the end of a torrid day for the prime minister, this was clearly a very unwelcome intervention.
But a frequent refrain from many is that campaigns are too controlled and choreographed and politicians should spend more time interacting with real people.
Well, for better or for worse, that happened today.