To their credit, the other (all male) panellists supported her position.
The next question was: “After the ‘main de dieu’ should football give technology a chance?”
Dimbleby felt it necessary to tell the listeners that Harriet looked as if she did not understand the question. When she assured him that she did, & started to answer, he interrupted to say that he had not been going to come to her first, anyway, leaving her sounding punctured & lame.
She turned the tables magnificently when he finally deigned to invite her to comment, which she did briefly & to the point, ending with “I think there was nothing ‘hands free’ about Thierry Henry’s football.”
Dimbleby was deliciously disconcerted; to an audible “Oh well done!” from at least one of her fellow panellists, he could say only “I don’t know quite how to handle this.”
I have never counted myself among the fans of Harriet, but she really showed something of how she has managed to survive in politics (is there any other survivor of that 1997 Cabinet, other than Gordon Brown & Jack Straw?)
It almost puts her into the Thatcher of-course-I-don’t-agree-with-her-but-you’ve-got-to-admire-her class.
Also last week, I took the trouble to follow up a link from Paul Waugh which promised a neat programme that allows me to line up a tv clip at the exact point – which did not work when I tried it. And I was so excited to hear about it!
For the first time in over a decade I watched Newsnight. I might never have been away with its pretentious set & portentous music, same presenter, same reporter & saw another disturbing BBC political piece, involving a Jeremy Paxman & Michael Crick on the possible deselection of Elizabeth Truss by Norfolk Conservatives - cue giggling about Turnip Taleban.
The recent Milburn report showed that journalism is one of the professions which has shown the biggest decline in social mobility of entrants. With pieces like this one from Newsnight we are increasingly getting the impression that BBC political reporters in particular think of themselves as Victorian explorers of the far flung corners of the Empire whenever they have to leave their Westminster redoubt.
It is not just the potential Tory government who can be characterised as sneering public school boys
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BBC & political respect
BBC & political respect
