Minister 'weaponising' Savile will make MPs queasy - but there's a bigger risk

Sometimes governments blindly idle into political fights and sometimes they go windmilling in with purpose.

The extraordinary row picked by Peter Kyle on Sky News on Tuesday is most definitely the latter of these two.

The science secretary's reference to Jimmy Savile was no slip of the tongue.

Ministers seem to believe Reform UK has made a misjudgement in pledging to scrap internet safety laws, given the massive unease across the country about what children are viewing online.

As a result, Kyle is trying to point at their position by stoking a spat with (some would say) inflammatory language that sucks up media attention.

It's not exactly a new technique.

Think back to 2023 and Labour did something very similar when it ran attack ads accusing Rishi Sunak of not wanting to lock up child abusers - in a bid to draw attention to the criminal justice system.

Go even further back, and it's essentially the same strategy employed on the red Brexit bus in 2016 with its pledge to divert money from the EU to the NHS.

All heavily disputable claims that are made to start a row and move the spotlight on to a politically convenient topic.

But the risk inherent in tactics like this is that it makes some on your own side feel a little icky.

The last politician to invoke Jimmy Savile as part of a political attack was Boris Johnson when he accused Sir Keir Starmer of failing to investigate the serial child abuser when he was the country's head prosecutor.

That led to the resignation of the then prime minister's top policy aide.

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There will be plenty in Labour who feel similarly queasy about a cabinet minister weaponising one of the country's most notorious paedophiles to lay into an opposition party.

The bigger risk though is whether Peter Kyle will really emerge victorious from this fight.

Nigel Farage is going for the Online Safety Act in part because it fits with his party's narrative around mainstream politics trying to silence the concerns of ordinary people.

Those disenfranchised sections of society are a key group of voters that Reform are trying to reach.

Whether they are outweighed by those put off the party by its recent pronouncements remains to be seen.

But for now, this seems to be a fight that Nigel Farage is also keen to have.