On squirming politicians

My main reaction to this morning's three main political interviews on The Andrew Marr Show was to give credit where credit's due to Andrew Marr for making all three of them squirm. 

Jo Swinson, Diane Abbott and James Cleverly all ended up having to bring into play some of their favourite party tricks for evading interviewers' questions - questions that today focused, I think tellingly, on the contradictions, absurdities and hypocrisies of their respective positions on Brexit and elections.

Jo flannelled by being all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, channelling (as ever) her inner Tigger. She flailed around very badly, but kept on smiling while blagging away like a dying bagpipe. She was dreadful.

Diane is always dreadful. It's her thing to be dreadful. She flannelled by impersonating herself on Dead Ringers and talking v e r y slowly to Andrew Marr, as if wearily but patiently explaining the blindingly obvious to a stupid child. She kept on repeating the same stupid things over and over again. Andrew exposed her but I doubt she realised it. She's like the world's stupidest armadillo. (No offence to armadillos).

James flannelled most cleverly of all by repeatedly accusing his BBC interviewer of not getting his facts right, and by picking up on and making hay with a stray wrong word by his BBC interviewer. Though the latter felt like a deflection attempt to me, it put Andrew Marr on the back foot and the subsequent 'fact-rebutting' resulted in stalemate. I don't think the whole interview did James Cleverly huge credit though.

You can please yourself (to quote Morrissey), but that's my take on it.