Sunak's chess tables in the park are a victim of the Twitter approach to politics

'Levelling up' chess tables costing £50k installed https://t.co/z6t9A7Nhi7

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) May 7, 2024

This BBC News story has been generating outrage and ridicule all day, not least because it has been written to make it sound as though each table has cost £50,000. In fact that's the total cost of all 20 tables.

And let me extend a particular hello to the gentleman from Buckinghamshire who asked if people in the North can play chess.

I will admit these tables are another of the strange ragbag of policies that Rishi Sunak has come up with as prime minister. But they seem to me a benign and inexpensive idea compared when set against most things the Conservatives have offered recently.

Somewhere in the opposition to them are currents of both snobbery and inverse snobbery. Would anyone have made a fuss if the government has put 20 sets of goalposts in these parks?

Mostly, though, the chess tables are a victim of the accepted approach to politics on Twitter. Everything your party does is right, and everything the other parties do is not just wrong, but wicked and ridiculous too.

I realise I can be as guilty of this as anyone, but it's not an approach that has done British politics any favours.