So Labour waded into the Gregg Wallace row. Why don’t they get their own house, parliament, in order? | Marina Hyde

Westminster is so notorious for bad workplace behaviour it’s known as ‘Pestminster’, but politicians seem more worried about a TV cooking show

Why has the prime minister weighed in on the content of a Gregg Wallace Instagram video? News that Keir Starmer’s spokesperson has taken the trouble to denounce the outer monologue of the beleaguered MasterChef host means – somewhat amazingly – that Gregg has no longer said the stupidest thing this week. This is, after all, supposed to be the week of Starmer’s big reset. Pivoting to rent-a-quote somehow does not feel like the solution that a malfunctioning UK requires.

Perhaps Starmer thought it would make him more popular? He is polling at a minus 33% approval rating with the British public, which I would have thought was actually rather lower than Gregg Wallace. Perhaps this is why the No 10 spokesperson felt – wrongly – that it might be the business of a prime minister to have a view on reporters’ questions about what he felt about someone blowing up their career on Insta at 7am on a Sunday. Reporters will always ask these questions, especially on slow news days, but experience shows that there is absolutely no expectation to answer them, let alone a requirement. Wallace has since declared he “wasn’t in a good head space” when he posted the video. One can’t help feeling the PM’s spokesperson should do the same.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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