Why do politicians never answer a simple question?
MOVE over Andrew Marr. Eat your heart out Jeremy Paxman. British television has a brilliant new political inquisitor, this paper’s very own Richard Madeley. He has just given us a moment of the purest TV gold. In any future programme that lists memorable incidents in televised politics, this wonderful exchange is bound to be near the top.
Over recent years we have become used to politicians dissembling and obfuscating during interviews. The reluctance to answer a straight question is one of the central ingredients of their trade.
But this week, with a heroic mix of courtesy, determination and clarity, Richard turned the tables on a senior government minister who was indulging in the worst kind of verbal distraction.
Standing in for Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, Madeley interviewed the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, a figure not renowned for his gravitas or maturity. Indeed, around Westminster, he is known by his critics as “Private Pike” and his performance certainly lived down to his reputation for gaucheness.
Adding a surreal touch to proceedings, Williamson was in a West Midlands safari park during the live interview because he wanted to publicise a Ministry of Defence initiative about the protection of African wildlife. But it was his absurd non-answers to Richard Madeley’s questions that brought the real comedic drama.
Richard persistently asked Williamson whether he regretted his childish recent statement, made after the Salisbury nerve agent attack, that the Kremlin should “go away and shut up”. The Defence Secretary simply refused to answer. Instead he burbled about the NHS and the global response to Russia.
After the fourth refusal, Richard announced, “All right, interview terminated.” At that very moment an elephant with a perfect sense of timing wandered across the screen behind Williamson, giving the Defence Secretary a look of disdain.
Back in the studio Richard asked in exasperation, “What are these politicians like?” Viewers who watched Williamson’s pathetic attempt at stonewalling will have echoed those sentiments.
RICHARD Madeley not only spoke for the nation but also created television history. He was, I think, the first broadcaster to cut off an interview with a politician live on air.
In the past there have been several cases of politicians walking out of interviews in fury, like the occasion in 1982 when the defence secretary John Nott took offence at Sir Robin Day’s description of him as a “transient, here-today, gone-tomorrow politician”. Nott stood up, called Day’s interrogation “ridiculous” and marched off the set.
Labour leader Neil Kinnock lost his temper and halted a recorded interview in 1989 with BBC Radio 4’s James Naughtie, who had asked him a mild question about his party’s economic policy. “I’m not going to be bloody kebabbed,” ranted Kinnock.
Richard Madeley’s unique achievement has been to reverse the roles. In doing so he has performed a public service. From now on politicians might hesitate before launching into scripted responses and rehearsed answers.
His termination of Williamson could herald a new approach to the televised political interview, though in truth this is a craft that has always been evolving.
In the early years of TV after the war, the BBC, which had a monopoly on broadcasting, was laughably deferential, while politicians treated the medium with indifference, none more so that the laconic prime minister Clement Attlee.
In October 1951, when asked by the BBC whether he had anything he’d “like to say about the coming election,” he replied with the monosyllable “No”.
But the age of deference passed in the late 1950s with the arrival of Robin Day and ratings-led commercial television. In February 1958 Day created a major controversy with a tough interview of the prime minister Harold Macmillan, including a question about the possibility of sacking the foreign secretary.
“The idiot lantern is getting too big for its ugly gleam,” complained one paper.
But a new era of confrontation had arrived, later epitomised by Paxman whose most famous interview, conducted in 1997, involved asking the home secretary Michael Howard the same question about prison policy 14 times.
AT least Howard survived and went on to become Tory leader. In contrast Paxman’s brutal treatment of Treasury minister Chloe Smith in a 2012 Newsnight appearance helped to trigger her resignation.
Members of the public have caught the mood of aggression. During the 1983 general election, Margaret Thatcher was famously put on the defensive during a live phone-in by school teacher Diane Gould over British conduct in the Falklands war.
Sometimes the more gentle, forensic approach works best, as the superb LBC broadcaster and Sunday Express columnist Nick Ferrari showed with his fact-based demolitions of Green leader Natalie Bennett and Labour’s shadow home secretary Diane Abbott during the last two elections.
But all too often, in reaction to robust interrogation, politicians have hidden behind platitudes, deceit and meaningless verbosity. Now Richard Madeley has blown that apart. He has always been an excellent broadcaster and journalist, combining verve with insight and eloquence during his highly successful career.
But he has really surpassed himself this week.
‘Madeley terminated the interview’