Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Not only was I on 18 Doughty Street's blogger TV last night, I shamelessly hung on and contributed to Talk Politics afterwards. You can see each programme again on their website, they are an hour long so I am not expecting a vast audience. We all had to choose our best three recent blogs and one of mine was a strong call for fixed term parliaments by Lynne Featherstone MP who blogged about the manipulation of opinion over the timing:
I'm amazed what a soft ride the media have been giving Brown on this. We all know what he's up to - he wants the election to be on the date that best suits him, and wants to sow as much confusion as possible in the interim as to when it might or might not be. Where's the democracy in that? Yet the media have gone along with his game.
It's one of the odd paradoxes of modern political reporting - it's usually bathed in an instinctive cynical covering about how all politicians are liars and fools - but also is often terribly conservative in playing the traditional rules of the game rather than questioning them (when was the last time a journalist blew the whistle on an unattributable dishing of one politician by another? You see - the rules of the game are that unattributable personal attacks are ok, so they just report them time after time).
So if I was a journalist - I'd be asking Brown to justify why he's changed his mind, and why - in a democracy of all places - the PM should be able to fiddle the system by picking a date of his or her own choosing? When Mrs T used to do that, Brown opposed it - ah... perhaps that's where his new-found admiration for her comes in!
Well said! I've blogged about this too, but then it goes like water under the bridge. It creates a childish dependency on the leader as everyone wonders 'will he, won't HE' which corrupts our political culture.
It was great that everyone agreed, left right and centre.
