Shameless

The Tories' capacity for crass, ignorant behaviour is hardly a well-kept secret, but even by those standards the comments made by Dominic Raab on Friday were particularly appalling.

The former Brexit Secretary tweeted a photo of himself grinning in a supermarket with the caption: "Thank you to Tesco in Molesey and the Trussell Trust for partnering to encourage customers to generously provide food collections for families in our community, who are struggling at this time of year." In so doing, he conveniently ignored the fact that it's the policies of his own party that have created the need for such collections - and for members of the public and the private sector to step in and provide the basic welfare support that should be the responsibility of government.

Perhaps, though, we shouldn't be so surprised. After all, Raab has previously demonstrated that he has no understanding whatsoever as to the reality of the situation, claiming on BBC2 in May last year that "the typical user of a food bank is not someone who's languishing in poverty, it's someone who has a cashflow problem episodically". Those comments - branded "stupid and deeply offensive" by the Lib Dems' Tim Farron - were swiftly rubbished by a representative from the Trussell Trust, who pointed out that delays to benefits (caused by Universal Credit) and low incomes are inextricably linked.