The culture secretary has claimed the most recent general election was the “most toxic I have ever participated in” this morning.
Discussing the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump on Saturday , Lisa Nandy called for a reset in politics.
BBC Breakfast host Jon Kay raised the topic by asking Nandy: “Of course, you were close to Jo Cox who was murdered – a fellow MP – but you also saw the murder of David Amess.”
Alluding the attempted assassination of Trump, Kay asked: “As a prominent politician here, what do you think when you see something like that anywhere in the world?”
Nandy said she was “horrified” and “angry that our politics has been allowed to descend to that level”.
She said Keir Starmer had already phoned Trump about the incident, to convey his sympathies.
The cabinet minister continued: “It’s been heartening to see many world leaders come out and stand against what happened in America yesterday, but it is part of a wider toxicity of politics.
“We’ve just been through the general election here in the UK – it was the most toxic election I can ever remember participating in.
“I think what we need is real leadership across the political spectrum.”
She added that her government intends to condemn violence “wherever it is found” and will “uphold the highest standards” in their actions and conduct.
Nandy promised there would be a “reset moment” in UK politics, and that parliamentarians would be able to “disagree agreeably”.
Nandy also referenced the England’s national football manager for the men’s team in her interview with Sky News, saying: “It is firmly my intention that this government will be different – we will be far more Gareth Southgate and far less Michael Gove, the era of division needs to end.”
Gove, previously a Tory big beast who served in government, chose to step down at the latest election.
'It was the most toxic election that I can ever remember participating in'
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) July 15, 2024
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told #BBCBreakfast the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump was the latest example of the 'toxicity in politics' that she saw in the General Election… pic.twitter.com/BXI0xdyiqP
Nandy was also put on the spot over past comments from her colleague, foreign secretary David Lammy, about Trump.
Before then US president visited the UK in 2018, Lammy wrote in TIME magazine: “Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath, he is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long.”
On Radio 4′s Today programme, host Emma Barnet asked Nandy: “Was that appropriate?”
“I think all of us will have said things – including me – that when we look back on them, we think we could have expressed them differently,” the culture secretary replied.
She said on both sides of the Atlantic, over the last decade and a half, there’s been a rise in “more and more extreme language and more heat”.
“I think we, collectively as a political class, have done a real disservice in the leadership we’ve shown,” Nandy said, adding that she, Lammy and the prime minister all aim to improve the rhetoric and “model that behaviour” for the public.
