MOUTH OF THE WEAR Why the outrage at politicians just being asked questions?
The BBC has courted more controversy by using interviews as some sort of vehicle for asking questions. Business Secretary Alok Sharma was unhappy about the “gotcha line of questioning” when asked about the Prime Minister’s response to queries on new Covid-19 rules here in the North East.
Boris Johnson’s performance came at a press briefing, not an interview. But we split hairs. Mr Sharma seemed unhappy that interviews are becoming like a “quiz show”.
Indeed, political interviews are taking on a distinct question-and-answer element these days. It’s a slippery slope, especially when politicians are probed on their weaker subjects, such as what they were doing an hour beforehand.
Earlier, the minister Gillian Keegan was forced to pass on a North East covid question.
However, she is at Education, not Health or Home affairs. Her constituency is in Sussex, so it was perhaps a little unfair to expect her to memorise the convoluted rules and regs of this region.
But the Prime Minister represents everyone, so how gallant of her boss to deflect attention from her only hours later.
No one is expected to know everything. But there are some things that a politician ought to know as a matter of course. They realise this too.
That’s why during election campaigns they all swot up on the price of a loaf and who’s number one in the charts (although the significance of the latter isn’t clear).
Perhaps therefore we should take matters to their extreme and really have a TV quiz. There are quizzes for sport, films, nature, music etc. Why not coronavirus rules; with rounds on childcare, pubs, parks, bubbles and so on? The winner gets a test.
It should be open to every politician (we assume from the outrage at Mr Johnson’s gaps in knowledge that all opposition MPs know the rules off pat). In Sunderland the answers would be of more than academic interest.
The only difficulty would be the somewhat transient nature of a correct answer. When we watch, say, A Question of Sport, we can reasonably assume that a correct answer will still be correct by the time Eastenders comes on.
Apologies if I misspoke.