SOMETIMES, you do wonder if politicians or their advisors even know that Google exists.

In the run-up to the Prime Minister’s big speech yesterday we were told she would be walking onto the stage to a “90s classic”.

Twitter had a field day with this information. Radiohead’s Creep? Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity? Garbage’s Stupid Girl?

In the end the Tories settled for M People’s Moving On Up. We can debate the definition of a “classic” at another time, but, unsurprisingly, to everyone but the Conservatives it seems, this did not go down well with M People.

“So apparently we can’t stop Truss walking out to our song, very weird!” Mike Pickering (the source of the M in the band’s name) announced on Twitter.

“So sad it got used by this shower of a government. BTW Truss Labour used it with permission in 90’s. I don’t want my song being a soundtrack to lies.”

We can maybe forgive him the odd grammatical error in the face of such righteous fury.

It would have taken a matter of moments for someone in the Tory comms team to Google Heather Small, the band’s lead singer and find out that her son was a Labour councillor. Or, for that matter, to check the song’s lyrics. The first line goes, “You done me wrong, your time is up …” which, you know, given Liz’s travails this last week or two might be awkward. As for “Move right out of here, baby, go on pack your bags …” Well that’s just a gift to your opponents, isn’t it?

But then it’s clear that politicians never actually listen to the lyrics. When he was Prime Minister, old Etonian David Cameron once claimed he was a fan of The Jam’s single Eton Rifles, which was, of course, an attack on Eton. “Which bit didn’t you get?” the song’s writer Paul Weller grumbled afterwards.

Pop and politics have long been uneasy bedfellows. The former has often offered an easy target for the latter. That’s when politicians aren’t trying to get some street cred by association. In 1984 in the United States the Republicans asked Bruce Springsteen if they could use his song Born in the USA as part of then President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign. The Boss wasn’t keen. In the years since every election campaign has been studded with stories of musicians angry that their music has been associated with politicians of various hues. Various Britpoppers came to regret their initial association with New Labour in the 1990s.

Of course in the grand scheme of things reducing a pop song, good, bad or indifferent, to a political jingle is not the greatest crime. But even minor offences deserve to be punished, particularly when they’re carried out as ineptly as this.

I mean, what, in the circumstances, is “Moving On Up” meant to mean here? Moving on up from where? From crashing the economy?

What is strange in all this is that the Tories missed the obvious 1990s track for the occasion. Given her recent miseries, the obvious track for Truss should surely have been D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better. Or did someone get there before her?