S ecurity was tight at Rupert Murdoch’s London headquarters for the Sun’s “Election Showdown” with Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer . Just to go to the toilet on the 17th floor, you needed an escort. It wasn’t clear whether the organisers were worried we might get in somewhere we weren’t wanted or whether we might be trying to get out.
These events need all the viewers they can get. Fair to say, the spin room just down the corridor from where the action was taking place was not the ideal place to be. Largely because the technology was barely functioning.
You get better reception on a cancelled Avanti West Coast train. Amazing to report that one of the country’s biggest media organisations has not yet installed broadband. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone.
A small army of political journalists had been locked into a room where there was at best interrupted coverage. We’d all have been better off staying at home. Then maybe that’s a metaphor for the whole debate set-up.
A format that gets tireder by the day. Yet again best understood as an ego trip for the broadcaster and the presenter. The idea that anyone’s minds might be changed by anything that is said is a category error.
If you’re looking for intelligence you’re in the wrong place. This is strictly entertainment. If you can call it that.
Not exactly the Euros. Right from the start there were technical problems. Time and again the screen froze leaving presenter Harry Cole and the two party leaders as fr.
