Working full-time it's very rare that I get to see The Daily Politics. Having the afternoon off, I watched it today and very much enjoyed it.
It will admit that I was a bit disappointed that Andrew Neil didn't start things off by saying:
Coming up, folks, we've got a hedgehog that can recite the Labour Party constitution backwards, the Tooth Fairy who acts as Tom Watson's personal dental hygienist, Britain's top unicorn-trainer.. and...(incredulously)..DIANE ABBOTT!!?!!"
He did interview Diane Abbott though and she beggared incredulity as usual, vaguely floundering around her comments last night about Brexit voters being racists and getting muddled about everything else.
To describe it as a 'car crash interview' goes without saying (it's Diane Abbott after all), but we're all so used to those by now that no one - least of all Diane Abbott - even bats an eyelid any more.
Is there anything she could say or do, however stupid, extreme or racist, that would ever lead to her downfall?
Shami Chakrabarti's 'car crash interview' with Andrew Neil today was a different matter entirely. She certainly did bat an eyelid...as well as squirming with discomfort throughout the entire interview. Her interview struck me as something of a disaster (for her).
Was her discomfort merely down to being unused to coping with difficult questions from the BBC? (AN's persistent probing of her 'report/whitewash' into Labour Party antisemitism and the 'coincidence' of her peerage certainly seemed to severely agitate her). Or was she manifesting signs of guilt and shame (as some have suggested on social media)?
If you watch it you'll also see a BBC reporter making some Corbynistas take the huff by asking them if they recognise certain Labour shadow cabinet members (with them complaining that such a line of questioning was a media conspiracy), and Nigel Farage and some Labour shadow cabinet member I didn't recognise talking about last night's Hillary-Donald debate, and (Blairites) Polly Toynbee and Steve Richards being the chosen journalist commentators and doing their usual thing.
What fun!
Was her discomfort merely down to being unused to coping with difficult questions from the BBC? (AN's persistent probing of her 'report/whitewash' into Labour Party antisemitism and the 'coincidence' of her peerage certainly seemed to severely agitate her). Or was she manifesting signs of guilt and shame (as some have suggested on social media)?
If you watch it you'll also see a BBC reporter making some Corbynistas take the huff by asking them if they recognise certain Labour shadow cabinet members (with them complaining that such a line of questioning was a media conspiracy), and Nigel Farage and some Labour shadow cabinet member I didn't recognise talking about last night's Hillary-Donald debate, and (Blairites) Polly Toynbee and Steve Richards being the chosen journalist commentators and doing their usual thing.
What fun!
That was the performance of a very guilty conscience. I wouldn't have expected it from the usually quietly smug Baroness, but she literally was squirming in her seat, not as free and easy with the platitudes as usual, looking everywhere but at her host.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, though, what is it that she's really feeling guilty about? She basically trashed her own reputation and a key principle of her career when she told Neil that the only way to affect change was to join Labour. So, the whole thing about Liberty being independent and Universal Shami being the treasured independent observer and wise, impartial judge was just an act? She knew her whole career as an independent critic and activist could never accomplish anything if she wasn't inside?
No, perhaps not. Perhaps she's just grasping for something to say, knowing she's a hypocrite. I've heard her say in the past that she's been offered titles lots of times, so why suddenly now accept it? She's been asked these questions for weeks now. Why is she still unable to handle it?
If only Neil had made more about what he called "generalizing" the anti-Semitism inquiry. Still, the Daily Politics chair is much harder than Marr's soft sofa. Of course, the screaming about bias from the Corbynistas will only get worse now.