If political journalists have lived through many eventful evenings since the Brexit vote in 2016, the day on Wednesday was marked by a series of twists and turns, until the resignation of Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday.
The agitation had gone up a notch once more at the end of the day.
As Interior Minister Suella Braverman had just left office, Wednesday evening turned into a rat race in parliament between the Conservatives around a vote on shale gas production.
In this general confusion, presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy interviewed the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Steve Baker, and following the interview chuckled: “What a bastard!”.
The remark was made off-air, but was recorded and soon caused a stir on social media.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy quickly apologized to Steve Baker.
“After a robust interview with MP Steve Baker, I used a very offensive word in a moment of off-air distraction,” he attempted to explain himself on Twitter.
“This word is below the standards that I impose on myself and I offer my unreserved apologies,” he added.
But the channel said on Thursday the presenter’s outing breached its “strict” code of conduct and kicked him off the air for a week.
Another journalist, the head of the ITV’s political department, Robert Peston, slipped a slip by renaming the new finance minister Jeremy Hunt “Jeremy Cunt” (Jeremy Asshole).
Others struggled to find the words to describe what they saw, such as Guardian political reporter Peter Walker who tweeted: “During the worst period of the Brexit turmoil under Theresa May, I I once had to stop writing a paragraph to look for synonyms for ‘chaos’. Tonight, it happened once more, but for ‘carnage'”.
