Tears and dissembling on Marr

Quite a remarkable Andrew Marr show this morning.

Everybody is talking about the Alistair Campbell moment when the great man,that's Campbell appeared to break down over Marr's questioning over the dodgy dossier.

Having been already grilled about the similarities in his book to the relationship with Blair,he seemed genuinely upset about the whole affair and the way the media are continously on the back of his "friend"

People are asking whether this was genuine emotion or pure theatre,the cynics pointing to Gordon Brown's disembling in front of Piers Morgan as part of the soft heart stratgey to the party.

I don't agree in the theatre,I think he was genuinely upset by the continous relentive pressure of the media over this subject.He clearly feels that the Blair government took the right decisions in 2002-3

Whilst Marr was back to his best as an incisive political interviewer,an opportunity he has missed on numerous occassions recently,in some ways I agree with Campbell

"I don’t think the media is interested in truth now... (it's) interested in settling scores, settling agenda,"

It wasn't the only bit of incisive bit of political interviewing as Marr put William Hague under pressure over Lord Ashcroft.

Hague described him as a close friend but failing,despite repeated opportunities to answer the golden question.Does he pay UK tax.

Nevertheless putting up a dramatic riposte to the Ashcroft controversy by comparing it to the Trade Union funding of the Labour party,hardly to my mind a fair comparison

Marr is savaged

Watching Andrew Marr come up against the prince of Darkness this morning was a lesson to all political journalists when conducting a serious interview.

Marr was,for want of a better expression taken to the cleaners by the man who invented spin.

He missed several opportunities to score hits instead resorting to a diatribe of rumour and innuendo which Mandleson was easily able to brush aside.

To be sat opposite the interviewee being told,quite bluntly "right next question" must have been an excruciatingly awful experience for Marr who has lost his political bite since being propelled out of his political role at the Beeb and becoming 'mainstream.'

Not such a cosy fireside chat

Anyone watching Andrew Marr's interview with David Cameron this morning will have had their enjoyment interrupted no less than three times as the line to chez Cameron kept failing.

What made it worse for the Tory leader was that it went down at crucial moments,firstly when talking about bringing back Ken Clarke and then when he was about to admit to some mistakes.

Unfortunately for Marr the interview,conducted at Cameron's house in response to Marr's cosy fireside chat with Gordon Brown last Sunday,never recovered its momentum.

You can read the transcript here

Watch out Boris will swipe your oyster card

In his first major interview this year Tory Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson totally overwelmed the quite hapless Andrew Marr as he used the occasion as a major offensive against Ken Livingstone.


The centre piece of Boris' policy seems to be making London's buses safer and try as he might Marr could not deflect Boris away from his scheme of taking the oyster cards off unruly individuals and making them paint community centres.

Whether this will encourage the voters of London to vote on mass for the Tory candidate remains to be seen.

I would though have thought the agenda should be more about racial policies and cronnyism,a subject that Johnson did with a little help from Marr reflect on.When pressed on the subject of Lee Jasper,

Marr asking"

Does that mean that you would get rid of the Lee Jasper types and all of that part of what the mayor does or not?"

to which Boris replied

"I want to bring people together in this fantastic cosmopolitan city and you will see huge energy and effort by me, for instance, to get more black and minority ethnic people into the Metropolitan Police."