Sinead Butler
Jul 05, 2024
Good Morning Britain, ITV
Steve Baker bickered with George Osborne live on air after losing his seat - or so he thought, as it was actually Ed Balls he was speaking to in an awkward mix-up.
The case of mistaken identity by the former Northern Ireland Secretary and Wycombe MP came during an interview on Good Morning Britain as viewers heard his reaction to losing his seat to Labour's Emma Reynolds.
Baker - who initially launched his election campaign from his family holiday in Greece - is one of many Conservative casualties following Labour's landslide victory this election with a majority of 412 seats in the House of Commons.
Following the results, Baker candidly said "thank god I'm free at last" on the breakfast programme.
"I do think the Labour government will be a disaster..." Baker added. "I'm very sad for my country. But for me, strictly personally, thank god at last I'm free."
That's when GMB co-host Ed Balls chimed and asked: "So the voters got it wrong in your constituency?"
To which Baker got defensive and incorrectly believed it was ex-Chancellor George Osborne who put this question to him.
"George, I'm not having an argument with you, if they'd said to me it was blue on blue I would have refused [to come on]," Baker answered back.
Co-host Susanna Reid tried to inform Baker as she shouted: "It was Ed Balls!"
However, this didn't stop Baker who continued with his snappy response.
"George, you and I have got a lot of history and if only you'd fought a better Remain campaign."
The former Shadow Chancellor and former Labour MP then replied: "Steve, I have to just apologise to you and George Osborne, it was me, Ed Balls, asking you that question rather than George.
"Your desire to lay into George Osborne was so overwhelming that we couldn't hold you back! It was me asking if you thought the voters had got it wrong, by the sound of it you think George Osborne got it wrong."
Yet Baker carried on with his tirade: "Well, I think you got it wrong too. In the end I got into politics over three matters - your Government rode an enormous credit boom within which the money supply trickled, leading to the global financial crisis; the massive manufacturing injustice...
"I got into politics because of our complicity in extraordinary rendition, which you were party to, and I got into it because your party brought forward the Lisbon Treaty to avoid having a referendum on the constitution for Europe. If only you'd had a referendum, we'd never have got here, Ed."
Balls hit back: "Goodness me, it's 2024 and you've just lost your seat. You've thought of three different things that all happened over 17 years ago! Are you maybe in denial?"
"No, not at all," Baker denied before he then criticised both Balls and Osborne's time in Westminster.
"I'm afraid you and George are as bad as each other on this score, neither of you ever really understood monetary economics and I've wasted a lot of breath in the House of Commons trying to explain to George in particular what was going on and the kind of injustice it was manufacturing.
"Well much good did it go everybody, and now with the nation seething with a sense of injustice, economic injustice... At last, as I say, I'm free, thank god."
"Go on Mr Baker, tell us what you really think!" Ball jested with a laugh.
"Oh I'm glad to, yeah. I'm a happy man. Not for the thousand staff who have lost their jobs, or the country... It's going to be an absolute circus," Baker retaliated.
Elsewhere, here are all the Tory MPs who lost their seats in the general election and the best election memes as Tories set to be wiped out in a Labour landslide.
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