Gordon Brown in hiding with Andrew Marr, pt. 1 of 2
Gordon Brown in hiding with Andrew Marr, pt. 2 of 2
It wasn’t exactly a tough no-nonsense interview was it? Marr certainly went through the motions, but Brown got away with a lot of nonsense and flannel that a more rigorous interview style would have drawn out and highlighted.
David Cameron, speaking on Adam Boulton’s show on Sky News, described the Brown/Marr interview:
I think there are two points. There is the manner in which the statement was made and I think for the Prime Minister who said I am going to do things differently, I’m going to be transparent, no more of the spin it was a classic example of spin. You get one broadcaster invite them into Downing Street and do a special little interview rather than actually go out there and face the press and answer the questions.
The second thing is not just the manner of how it was done but the content of the interview. I just think he is treating people like fools. He is saying I am not having an election because I want to get on with the changes. We all know he was planning an election, that he wanted an election, it was briefed that he was going to decide when he had looked at the poll. He is not being straight with people. He ought to have said I’ve looked at the polls and I recognize I have more to do to convince people then at least he would have been straight. Instead we have had spin…
Later, while interviewing Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Adam Boulton slipped in:
So why couldn’t the Prime Minister be honest with the country? Why couldn’t he tell us what he was thinking about about a general election? And why couldn’t he actually tell the nation face to face live yesterday that he was calling it off?
…obviously still smarting from being cast into the Downing Street gutter courtesy of Brown’s soft-soap opportunism and the willingness of Andrew Marr and the BBC to go along with it.
Whilst Brown and co. got a good going over yesterday afternoon and in the Sunday papers for the manner of his announcement and the fallout from his dithering, it appears that his original plan was to have Marr along for a cosy chat on the quiet, until, if The Observer is to be believed, plans for his announcement were thrown into disarray when news of his decision was leaked to ConservativeHome.
Would Marr and the BBC have announced Brown’s decision on Saturday afternoon if Brown’s plans hadn’t been leaked or would they have kept Marr’s exclusive until Saturday night or even Sunday before going public? It would certainly have suited Brown if that had happened.
A shoddy business all round.
Update: Like Blair before him, Brown has opted to have one of his ‘monthly briefings’ today – you know the sort – the ones that happen at short notice whenever the Prime Minister wants to appear as if he’s open and honest. Nick Robinson sums it up nicely on his blog, getting in a good dig in passing:
Here we go again. The prime minister, we’re told, “will brave the inquisition/face the music/confront the feral beast [choose cliche of choice] at the beginning of his worst week yet”.
Heard it before? Of course you have, whenever Tony Blair was in the soup. Downing Street organised today’s news conference to show that Gordon Brown, just like his predecessor, could withstand the slings and arrows, the name-calling and the cat calls and still emerge looking like a prime minister.
The truth is that he would far rather do this at a news conference than in the bear-pit of Parliament or a round with the media’s toughest interviewers. It isn’t that difficult when you get to choose the questions (allowing you to say “the lady at the back with the headscarf” if the going gets tough and you fancy a detour into the Middle East) and you disallow follow-ups and when you stand up in the state rooms of Downing Street looking prime ministerial.
“…or a round with the media’s toughest interviewers” – so Nick doesn’t think Brown has done a round with the media’s toughest interviewers either…
Video clips courtesy of the BBC.
This is absolutely why the bbc cannot continue to be funded by the public purse and continue on its merry way as the propaganda department for nulab.
I don’t care about the blue peter cat,and I suspect that sort of thing only gets floated to dispel growing criticism of the real problem with the bbc, their inherant political bias
Oh yes, Andy Marr really put Brown stain under pressure didn’t he? YAWN
Marr is a toadying poodle.
Well I was wrong and I say sorry to the BBC. I posted yesterday that some BBC toady would give Brown an easy question when he came under pressure from the media in todays presss conference.
It wasn’t. It was some bird I’ve never heard of from GMTV that gave Brown a breather by asking some point less question on the postal strike just as Brown looked like he’d had enough.
So Gordon will reward GMTV with another interview then?
Can we save our Dear Leader?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7033257.stm
“His task now is to try and re-direct attention away from his greatest setback since he got the job and onto the big policy issues and his “vision” for the country.”
Wishful thinking or advice to the dear leader from the BBC?
How come no one asked the obvious question? If his vision is so different from the manifesto of 2005 then what has he been doing for the last 10 years and if he is dropping the 2005 manifesto he MUST have an election
I noticed he got a real kicking off Adam Boulton, Nick Robinson and off the bloke on ITV. More to do with them wanting to have a dig at Andrew Marr perhaps?
Next time we need an opinion from Gordon might as well just ask Andy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7033257.stm
Abandon Ship: The article you pointed out by Nick by Assinder is basically advice to their Labour friends! Full of little digs at the Tories (“who were about to start in fighting again”) who says? Assinder?
NOT an impartial and balanced piece. Brian Anderson sums it up well in his article in the Independent (!!)
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/bruce_anderson/article3038465.ece
“An honest and caring leader would not have done what he did over the troop movements from Basra.
It is worth dwelling on that episode, which is probably the most immoral act ever committed by a Prime Minister. Eden’s lies over Suez and Blair’s sexed-up dossiers might seem worse; their long-term consequences were certainly much more serious. But those two PMs at least had an excuse. They believed that duplicitousness was necessary in the national interest. So in personal moral terms, they were vastly less guilty than Gordon Brown. He has no national interest excuse. He was merely perpetrating a grubby little election stunt.
The mothers, wives and girlfriends of serving soldiers are condemned to long periods of strain. The men in the field have duties to distract them, comradeship to sustain them and hard days to ensure that, when there is time to sleep, it comes easily. The women at home have little to protect them from long, anxious hours followed by turning and tossing sleeplessness, interspersed with bad dreams. The doorbell rings: pray God it is not the chaplain. So when the waiting women heard that a thousand men were to come home for Christmas, there would have been widespread joy. Surely my Johnny will be one of them? Then it turned out that 770 out of the thousand had either been notified of their departure or were already back in Britain.”
And the main quote:
“A man who spins soldiers’ duties and lives is not fit to hold any important office, let alone the Premiership”
Now then BBC people; care to comment or will you still defend this flawed and bitter man who has squandered our futures and our childrens’ futures as well as soldiers’ lives by failing to buy them the correct kit?
Time and again the BBC says ‘Brown has spent more than any other Chancellor on public services’ You said it again tonight. Not once did you BBC-ers add but unfortunately thanks to Brown and his Labour buffoons a major part of that investment has been wasted !
Brown said he wouldn’t spin. But he’s simply replaced Spin-meisters like Alistair Campbell with new ones. The BBC.
I might be repeating myself (I have looked at the various threads and thought I had posted about this earlier but can’t seem to find it. If I’ve missed it I apologise.) but there might be something odd about the Nick Assinder piece linked to by Abandon Ship.
When just Part 1 was there the timestamp was 10:12 GMT 11:12 UK, (ie before Gordon Brown’s press conference) yet the following paragraph was written in the past tense:
“The first thing Mr Brown wanted to clear up was any suggestion, put about by the likes of minister Hazel Blears, that all the speculation had been got up by the media.”
I can’t tell if it’s supposed to refer to Brown’s interview with Marr, is just badly written or an indication that Assinder knew what Brown was going to say before he said it.
That aside, the way Assinder writes “the likes of Hazel Blears” is hardly complimentary.
Assinder also wrote this morning that “One of the planned bonuses from the election speculation was that it forced the Tories to reveal more of their policy initiatives.”
A prescient spin on this sorry mess seeing as Gordon Brown only framed the affair in this way at his evening meeting.
Part Two is similarly on another planet. Seeing as he became leader by default and only his constituents voted for him I cannot square that with Assinders assertions that “This was Gordon Brown attempting to remind voters and members of his party just why they had warmed to him in the first place”
Gareth | 08.10.07 – 11:50 pm |
I cannot square that with Assinder’s assertions that “This was Gordon Brown attempting to remind voters and members of his party just why they had warmed to him in the first place”
Try reminding yourself of the poll lead, AKA the Brown Bounce, that he enjoyed after assuming office. Then go back and check his approval ratings during the summer months.
Managed to square it yet?
If, instead of reflexively shouting foul at everything Assinder writes, you’d just think for one or two seconds longer………..
If Nick Assinder is ascribing the opinion polls with such weight, why are the Conservatives merely “apparently resurgent”?
Assinder talks of ‘voters’. Gordon Brown talked of ‘voters’ in his speech yesterday. If what they both are referring to is opinion poll voters then they are being equally specious. Particularly when this whole debacle has involved mutterings about calling a General Election.