Last week the Tories hid from the vote on their Universal Credit (UC) roll-out – resulting in a 299-0 defeat for the government, followed by a ridiculous attempt, slapped down with derision by the Speaker, to claim it wasn’t a defeat because the government hadn’t voted.
If you thought that was the most cowardly tactic the Tories could come up with, you were wide by a country mile.
Work and Pensions Secretary David ‘Chicken‘ Gauke is directly responsible for the UC programme. Yet he failed to follow the time-honoured convention that the government must respond to a Commons defeat, to the ire of the Speaker – and today, he is in hiding from the debate on Labour’s ‘urgent question’.
The irony of the DWP Secretary failing to turn up for a meeting when his victims are penalised for not turning up to a Jobcentre appointment because of a heart attack was not lost on Labour MPs:
Twitter activists are already calling for action against the cowardly foul/fowl:
Please retweet this if you think @DavidGauke should face sanctions for his act of cowardice. Shame on you David. #NoConfidence #ToriesOut pic.twitter.com/XCrmBIBpkQ
— Rachael Swindon (@Rachael_Swindon) October 24, 2017
And Gauke’s lame tactic of sending along his DWP mini-me Damian Hinds simply won’t wash.
Morally bankrupt. Utterly incompetent. Shamefully cowardly. Despicably callous.
Just ‘another day at the office’ for the Tory ‘government’.
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