Disaster Sunday

I think Andrew Marr has gawn off his trolley. Where are the mental health services when you need them? It started badly, with the Guardian's Helen Pidd preemptively admonishing us to insist that the London Bridge ‘incident’ shouldn’t be politicised - as if terrorism in the name of Allah isn’t inherently political.

    

In his “Making us feel proud” post, Craig transcribes Marr’s weirdly ambiguous intro, which lays itself open to being taken out of context, fiddled with and misconstrued for our entertainment. 

If I were as badly behaved as the media and took things out of context and fiddled with their intended messages, I’d seriously query why a lethal act of terrorism should make us feel proud of where we live. Of course, we know what he meant. He was proud of the ‘have a go’ British public who tackled the soldier of Allah with a tusk and a fire extinguisher. Not that that's anything to do with where we live.

I think everyone in their right mind would agree that this was a car crash of an interview. In fact, the whole programme was a disaster. I’d say Andrew Marr emerged from the car crash with the more serious injuries.

As far as Boris is concerned, he might try pitting the efficacy and wisdom of attacking one's opponent against enthusiastically promoting the merits of one's own policies.  As far as I’m concerned, both party leaders are wrong on this. 

The Labour Party wastes considerable energy slagging off ‘Tory Toffs’, which just shoves the politics of envy into the spotlight. Not a good look. Yes, we know all about the class war, which nowadays comes across as dated and uninspired; concentrating on their fantastical spending spree, that’s where most Labour votes will come from, sad to say.

It might be necessary for the Conservatives to slag off Labour’s economic naivety, its racism, hypocrisy and downright nastiness, but arguably that would be would be best left to others. It doesn’t sit well with Boris somehow. I imagine he’s been advised to treat the public as a bit thick and is primarily trying to hammer home the folly of falling for Labour’s bribery and corruption, but we need to hear much more of the Conservative Party’s positives from Boris. What are they, apart from getting something done?

I wonder how Andrew Marr is feeling this afternoon? And the producers of the show? Do they think it went well? Do they think it was effective or even wise to let Marr talk over the PM, prevent him from speaking and to reiterate accusations about ‘ten years’ over and over? It reached new levels of appalling. The complaints will be pouring in to BBC HQ - how will they respond? Will they respond?

Why didn’t Marr mention anything about “ten years ago” - or even ten months ago - to the smug little Baroness? Yes, she was there to discuss the question of sentencing, but the elephant in the room was so pungent that even if Marr couldn’t see it he must have caught a whiff of the stench. Baroness Whitewash, what did you think of the Chief Rabbi’s intervention in the 'non-existent' antisemitism question?

I bet you a fiver she got the BBC to sign a ‘don’t mention the war’ clause before agreeing to appear.