When Piers Met Gordon

So how many saw the Piers Morgan “I want to be friendly” interview with our dear leader on Sunday evening? Apparently 4 million of us did. I have to admit, I was one of them, however I did have a glass of wine to help me through it.

I actually tried to view the programme without taking any prejudices into it and to be perfectly honest, I felt that 5-10 minutes into it Brown was actually doing quite well. He was smiling, responding to questions well and looked genuinely relaxed. But as is so often the case with Brown he can’t keep the facade up for long and once we got past the first advert break he slipped back into his usual dull tones with long winded answers and a face that looks like it’s been slapped by an army of blind beings.

When we got to the part that had been trailed the most – the questions about how he dealt with and how he felt at the time of his first daughter’s death I though the dealt with it well. It was obviously very hard for him to talk about it as you might expect, but he spoke slowly and calmly in measured tones that came across well. Now, as a pre-record interview it is clear that they’ve had several takes and I would suspect that lying in the ITV dungeons offices is a tape of all the attempts that for whatever reason were not aired. I would not be surprised if Gordon did actually break down and then he refused to allow it to be shown as even he would consider that PR gone too far.

Clearly the object of the exercise was a PR stunt otherwise his advisers would not have agreed to him doing the interview. Piers Morgan’s questioning was hardly tricky to deal with, particularly because it didn’t deal with government policy, it focused solely on Gordon the man. So, will it help when it comes to the ballot box? I doubt it. Yes, the programme shows that he does have a personality and I don’t doubt that, but what I and many others have always said is that he doesn’t have the right personality to be a leader in the limelight such as the Prime Minister is.

I know from people who have worked closely with Brown that he is not necessarily the man the media make him out to be. Yes, by his own admittance he is not always the best at explaining things and that is very evident when he tries to sell his policies. Yes he doesn’t come across well on the TV and that is why he was better placed at the Treasury where he was by and large out of the view of the cameras.

I don’t often write in favour of Tony Blair, but thank goodness he got the leadership when he did, otherwise Labour would be in a much worse position than they already are. Oh, actually, maybe that would have meant the Tories would have been in government by now and the economy wouldn’t have been completely wrecked. Just a thought.