WITH the cost of living soaring it is a rare bill payer who is not wondering where savings can be made. Was it worth, for example, the cost of gas and electricity to get up and watch the Sunday politics shows yesterday?

Depends who was answering the questions. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business and Energy Secretary, seemed like the right man in the right place at the right time. His first stop was Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday, where he told the host: “It’s going to be a very difficult time.”

Phillips was underwhelmed. “People will be saying, ‘Is that all you’ve got’?”

The Minister outlined the help set out by the Chancellor last week, including a £200 up-front rebate on energy bills from October, to be repaid at £40 per year over five years.

Better value, even if his message was troubling, was John Allan, the chairman of Tesco. Appearing on BBC1’s Sunday Morning, he said worse was to come on food prices. While these had risen by 1% in the last quarter, this could increase to 5% in the next few months due to rising energy costs.

“It troubles us, and I’m sure troubles many people, that people may have to struggle to choose between heating their homes and feeding their families and that’s clearly not a situation that any of us should tolerate,” he said.

On BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show, Audrey Flanagan of the Glasgow South East Foodbank was worried that the situation had gone beyond choosing between heating and eating. “We will see people die,” she said.

Michael Matheson, Scotland’s Energy Secretary, shared those fears, saying the UK Government was not doing enough to help.

Compared to this, the other main topic of the day, Boris Johnson’s continuing woes, looked trivial. Still, the letters continue to arrive, and some Sunday papers were predicting the Prime Minister could face a no confidence vote this week.

READ MORE: Warning over fuel price surge

Letters to “the 22” are not the only way to show disapproval of the Prime Minister. One could, like the Chancellor, and the Health Secretary, criticise him for falsely claiming Keir Starmer was personally at fault for not prosecuting Jimmy Savile.

Any notion that Mr Kwarteng was going to join the critics was soon brushed aside. He told Phillips that it had been “perfectly reasonable” for the Prime Minister to mention Savile in the context of a debate about leadership and responsibility.

Nor was former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith going to join the rebellion. The MP was interviewed from home via Zoom, having spent the last week in isolation after catching Covid. Tackling the cost of living crisis had to be the Government’s priority, not embarking on another leadership contest, he said.

Mr Kwarteng found himself drawn into the day’s other talking point – the Prime Minister’s wife, Carrie. The Mail on Sunday had run extracts from First Lady, a new biography by Lord Ashcroft.

Interviewed on Times Radio’s T&G with Tom Newton Dunn, Mr Kwarteng was asked if there was an element of sexism in the way Mrs Johnson was being treated.

“I don’t think it’s sexist, I’m not going to go down the route of saying it’s sexist, but I’m saying her views are under scrutiny in a way that perhaps other prime ministers’ spouses weren’t.”

The subject came up during the newspaper review on Sunday Morning, with journalists Sarah Vine from the Mail and Jessica Elgot, the Guardian’s chief political correspondent.

Ms Vine, the former wife of Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, had written a column sympathetic to Mrs Johnson. She called the treatment of the Prime Minister's wife “the political equivalent of slut-shaming” and said she was “just a convenient scapegoat” for his mistakes.

Elgot agreed, up to a point. There was a difference between Mrs Johnson and other prime ministerial spouses, she said.

READ MORE: Final chance to restore trust says former leader

“She is by all accounts a political player, she has had senior positions in the Conservative Party, she is friends with many of his closest advisers, and fell out with several of [them] who have now departed. So she clearly has a significant influence in the governing of the country.

“Now we might think that’s inappropriate for her to have that, and blame the Prime Minister for it, but because she has taken on that role for herself, you can expect there to be some scrutiny of her politics.”

Sophie Raworth said she had planned to interview Boris Johnson but no dice. She hoped it would happen in "the next few weeks". A prediction to take to the bank? We shall see.