"British comedy at its finest, British politics at its worst.”

The secretary for energy and net zero has been called out in a car crash interview for referencing a non-existent ‘meat tax’ in her speech at the Tory Party conference.

MP Claire Coutinho used her speech on Tuesday to chastise the apparent vegetable loving Labour Party by accusing them of taxing meat. However, this quickly backfired during an interview later that day when she was brought back to reality and reminded that there is no meat-tax. 

During her speech Coutinho said: “It’s no wonder Labour seem so relaxed about taxing meat, Keir Starmer doesn’t eat it and Ed Miliband is clearly scarred by his encounter with a bacon sandwich.”

In an interview with Sophie Ridge on Sky News, the interviewer asked incredulously: “You didn’t write that did you?”

To which Coutinho said she had, and that: “I think it’s good to have a light moment in your speech.”

However, jokes aside, Coutinho said the point she was making was important: “The point is actually very serious, some of the things Labour are proposing are incredibly hard for working families.”

Yet her attempt to side track the conversation by avoiding the mention of the meat-tax did not impress Ridge who continued to repeatedly press her on her claim.

“But what’s a meat-tax? That’s what you’re saying here,” said Ridge.

“So the point is, they are proposing things which are pushing families too hard, so you’ve got things like the ULEZ tax, which costs families £12.50 a day.”

“But it’s not a meat-tax is it,” reminded Ridge again.

Coutinho went on: “And they’ve got things like proposing to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030, again which result in very difficult decisions for families.”  

“Also not a meat-tax.”

Ridge tried one last time: “Genuinely, there isn’t a meat-tax.”

Coutinho eventually answered: “This has been part of the debate, talking about discouraging people from eating meat. When people tell you that they want to discourage people from eating meat, what they mean is a tax.”

This is not the first time that a made up ‘meat-tax’ has been used as a target by the Tory Party. Rishi Sunak claimed to have scrapped a plan on taxing meat in his rowing back of key net zero policies. However, he was then slammed for inventing ‘straw men’ and claiming measures that never existed to begin with.

It forms a wider narrative where Tory MPs are seeming to spin made-up arguments, with Mark Harper referencing a 15-minute city conspiracy theory during his speech on Tuesday, a conspiracy debunked by his own government.

Former Tory MP Stephen Dorrell criticised the Tory MPs’ rhetoric, asking: “When did it become part of a minister’s job to promote non-existent conspiracy theories?”

Whilst Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds commented he’d “never seen a conference like this before”, where MPs are, “competing to say the silliest thing.”

Commenting on Coutinho’s interview, Green Party MP Jenny Jones wrote: “Well done to Sophy Ridge in persisting on the fictitious Meat Tax. Energy Sec was slippery and shameless. What depths the Tory party has sunk to. Even Tories are thoroughly embarrassed by the government we have. Liars, desperate, without integrity.”

One commentator summed the interview up as: “British comedy at its finest, British politics at its worst.”

(Image credit: Sky News / YouTube)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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