29-03-2015, 14:25
Mildly surprised C4 got away with showing this so close to this year's General Election.
I guess their defence against any complaints/accusations of political bias from any one party is that all players - Cameron, Clegg, Brown etc seemed to be depicted as all being as equally unsure of themselves, opportunistic and generally unprincipled as each other.
BUT...having said that I would say it appeared to me :
Tories were portrayed as being the better schemers (Osborne in particular).
Clegg as being a vacillating sell-out (assisted by a slightly unbelievable about-face from Paddy Ashdown being decisive in swaying the Lib Dem MPs to accept the deal with the Tories: "I came here to resign...but FUCK IT! Let's go for it"
Brown & Labour as being arrogant in trying to hang on assuming the Lib Dems would prop them up but then Brown belatedly trying to be dignified after hanging on too long and in deciding to go when he realised Lib Dems were just using him to try to get a better deal from the Tories.
Given the sort of thrust of the narrative being "Oh look, Nick Clegg's campaign, wasn't it great - a new type of politics being offered, not the same old same old....oh dear he got more votes but less seats..oh and then he sells out to be called Deputy PM"....if anything, the most subversive exchange was given to the civil servants at the end, basically along the lines of :
"we've got an entire system to make sure this doesn't happen and the undecided voters bugger it up"
"perhaps the problem wasn't the voters but the choices they were being offered"
That could be interpreted as "For God's sake vote for one of the big main parties, don't vote for the smaller protest party leader promising a shiny new breakthrough, as they'll just sell out to support whichever larger party will offer to get into bed with them " and so this time round is in fact not only an anti-Lib Dem but also an anti-UKIP stance ?
I guess their defence against any complaints/accusations of political bias from any one party is that all players - Cameron, Clegg, Brown etc seemed to be depicted as all being as equally unsure of themselves, opportunistic and generally unprincipled as each other.
BUT...having said that I would say it appeared to me :
Tories were portrayed as being the better schemers (Osborne in particular).
Clegg as being a vacillating sell-out (assisted by a slightly unbelievable about-face from Paddy Ashdown being decisive in swaying the Lib Dem MPs to accept the deal with the Tories: "I came here to resign...but FUCK IT! Let's go for it"
Brown & Labour as being arrogant in trying to hang on assuming the Lib Dems would prop them up but then Brown belatedly trying to be dignified after hanging on too long and in deciding to go when he realised Lib Dems were just using him to try to get a better deal from the Tories.
Given the sort of thrust of the narrative being "Oh look, Nick Clegg's campaign, wasn't it great - a new type of politics being offered, not the same old same old....oh dear he got more votes but less seats..oh and then he sells out to be called Deputy PM"....if anything, the most subversive exchange was given to the civil servants at the end, basically along the lines of :
"we've got an entire system to make sure this doesn't happen and the undecided voters bugger it up"
"perhaps the problem wasn't the voters but the choices they were being offered"
That could be interpreted as "For God's sake vote for one of the big main parties, don't vote for the smaller protest party leader promising a shiny new breakthrough, as they'll just sell out to support whichever larger party will offer to get into bed with them " and so this time round is in fact not only an anti-Lib Dem but also an anti-UKIP stance ?
