Rishi Sunak laughs off GP joke as naysayer says NHS ‘disintegrating’ | Political news

A chaotic end to a chaotic day

A chaotic end to a chaotic day for the Tory campaign.

Public engagements can be risky at best, never mind when you’re trailing in the polls four weeks before polling day.

You would have hoped that a somewhat closed event for Tory members in the safe Wiltshire countryside would have gone off without a hitch.

Not so – in what turned out to be Rishi Sunak’s worst day of the campaign so far.

As it turned out, the subject the questioner addressed was quite specific and certainly not a rebuke of the NHS’s conservative record.

The Prime Minister’s response – albeit a little robotic – was characteristically detailed and fluent.

Yes, at one point he laughed – but only when another man interrupted to say that GPs spent “more time on holiday than in surgery”.

Some in the crowd applauded Rishi Sunak’s response, while others were clearly upset at the attention that was absorbed by a single woman.

The caller later told reporters that she was still a Conservative 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 common 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’s what happened today.