Zeichner Newsnight debut felt flat in muddy debate
MY first appearance on Newsnight. It had been a longtime coming, but when I got the call last week, I have to admit I got a slight thrill. I like going on regional television, but somehow national TV always seems something different.
Certainly more pressure, definitely less friendly, and even more responsibility – you are batting for the team, and you don’t want to let others down.
But, of course, Newsnight is going through tricky times, and as I cheerfully pointed out to one or two friends who were kind enough to say they might stay up and watch, there was a danger that they might double the audience!
I was initially told that it was about Michael Gove’s plans for Cambridge, and it would be filmed in a field in South Cambridgeshire, which sounded harmless enough, and I have strong views on Gove’s vapid ‘Case for Cambridge’ which I have aired in this column before. As ever, as it came closer, the plan changed.
Apparently Newsnight have been under pressure to make the programme ‘more interesting’ which translates to ‘getting out of London’ and ‘out of the Westminster bubble’.
A field in South Cambridgeshire is certainly outside the bubble, but maybe insufficiently interesting, and possibly a bit wet and muddy at the moment.
So suddenly, it was a Question-Time style event with Kirsty Wark interpreting questions from a hand-picked studio audience.
My heart sank. People are often surprised when I say I don’t watch, or like Question Time – they somehow think that is what politics is about.
I feel exactly the opposite – people vying for applause by giving simplistic, crowd-pleasing answers is exactly what politics shouldn’t be about – it should be about finding positive outcomes and solutions, negotiating difficult trade-offs.
The yah-boo stuff comes with the territory, unfortunately, but it really isn’t what politics should be about.
And, frankly, it doesn’t really suit me, although I can do it when required.
So I girded myself for it, and chuckled slightly when the venue was revealed to be the Duxford Imperial War Museum. Not a muddy field.
With no disrespect to others on the panel, I thought it was a dull affair.
I doubt many readers of this column would have watched, and if you did, I understand why you might not have made it through to 11.15pm!
My sense was that Kirsty Wark wasn’t very comfortable with the format either. The audience were good, but by attempting to cover too many topics, the standard of discussion was predictably lightweight.
Kirsty’s attempts to stir it up over immigration fell flat – this is Cambridge, I thought to myself.
My takeaways were that the audience deserved a better format, and that the political representatives played to type.
Conservative attempts to say how well the government were doing also fell predictably flat, while the Liberal Democrat breezy claim that they had plans to solve everything lacked credibility, not least because the shadow of their role in enabling austerity under the Coalition looms large.
The most curious were the Greens, whose audience members were the most noisy. In chasing Tory votes, the Greens find themselves in an odd place – they paint a picture of endless gloom.
What has growth brought us, asked one in the audience. Which was a strange question to ask seated in a museum documenting astonishing technological achievement, close to a city which cracked DNA and has developed the wondrous technology that allows the whole world access to information and communication in ways unimaginable just a few decades ago.
And a little way from a city where people were inspired enough to design and build King’s Chapel and then fill it with the most glorious, inspired music.
I could go on – but I really don’t think our collective efforts are worthless. A huge challenge, of course, to do this without destroying the precious climate and natural world we are a part of.
And that’s the political challenge – which is why I reject all that blue/green pessimism.
I was going to say some of that – but, of course, there wasn’t the time! Maybe I get another chance – I await the call!