Gillian Keegan made quite the embarrassing slip-up this week when she turned up to help launch a Tory candidate’s campaign 24 hours early.
The education secretary travelled to Winchester to support Flick Drummond’s first day on the campaign trail only to find herself on her own outside the Statue of King Alfred.
That’s because Keegan accidentally arrived on Monday, not Tuesday, as was planned.
Keegan shrugged off the error when speaking to the local newspaper the Hampshire Chronicle, and posed for a photo anyway, even though the candidate she was endorsing was not there.
Still, she made sure to tell the newspaper: ”Flick is very experienced, a brilliant candidate, a great listener and a great doer.”
On the mix-up over timings, she said: “We thought it was tomorrow. It was just a misunderstanding.”
The incident drew quite a few reactions on X (formerly Twitter), with some comparing it to the Westminster-inspired parody, The Thick Of It, while others praised her comedic timing.
Drummond was elected as the MP for Meon Valley in 2019, but that constituency has now been split into either Winchester or Fareham.
Luckily for the Keegan, her gaffe was overshadowed by Tuesday’s leadership debate, where Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer went head to head for the first time.
She’s also not the only person on the Conservative campaign trail to make a blunder in the last two weeks.
For instance, the defence secretary Grant Shapps chose to hung up rather than answer a question about the safety of his seat live on Sky News earlier this week.
Meanwhile, the prime minister has been subject to photoshop after posing once again with a blank flipboard in a promotional TikTok video, and was teased on social media when his backdrop accidentally made him look like Mickey Mouse.