On Wednesday, the co-chair of the Conservative Party James Cleverly was absent for an interview with Sky News presenter Kay Burley, who made no secret of all the rather pressing questions she had for Cleverly. With queries ranging from Johnson likening rival Jeremy Corbyn to Stalin, to cabinet member Jacob Rees-Mogg claiming the victims of the Grenfell tragedy had ‘no common sense’ in not fleeing the burning building, to claims that Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns knew of a former aide of his allegedly sabotaging a rape trial, it was clear the interview would have been rather gruelling for Cleverly. Incidentally, the news broke that Cairns resigned from his role hours later.
The Conservative chairman clearly got cold feet and ducked out of the segment minutes before, leaving an unimpressed Burley to gesture at the empty seat (editor’s note: do we start calling empty-chairing ‘doing a Bettel?’) and continue with her questions at hand, made all the more damning by the chairman’s conspicuous absence. Allegedly, Cleverly was a mere fifteen feet away from the camera. Burley started the segment telling cameras she was “fuming” and “could not even begin to tell [you] how cross [she] is.”
After the saga gained traction on Twitter, Cleverly tweeted a screenshot of his schedule, alleging that he was not booked in to talk to Sky News. However, both Burley and Sky News reiterated that Cleverly had committed to answer questions on the show. On the show, the presenter told viewers: “I know that Number 10 Downing Street watch our show. I know the spin doctors at Number 10 Downing Street had absolutely reassured me by text that when politicians were doing the rounds in the morning they would be doing this programme.”
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