Twitter’s more left-leaning elements have largely spent their Sunday elevating the BBC’s Eddie Mair to hero status for giving Boris Johnson a tough time in an interview on this morning’s edition The Andrew Marr Show.
His appearance ties in with a new Michael Cockerell documentary which airs tomorrow.
Twitter’s acclamation of Mair stems from him giving Boris a tough time over his private life, his leadership ambitions and his now infamous conversation with Darius Guppy.
But other than a question about the Olympic stadium, he went largely unquizzed about the job he’s paid to do and the near £16bn of public money it makes him responsible for spending.
There was no mention of his radical reshaping of the capital’s policing and fire services, nothing about his stewardship of public cash or his decision to push up fares while spending millions on an army of health & safety inspectors, nothing about the vast borrowing he’s embarked on at City Hall.
The BBC clearly thinks Boris’s possible future PM-ship is a topic deserving of coverage, but how can such a discussion take place without any examination of his performance as Mayor?
For what it’s worth, I found Mair’s style far too aggressive and personal – his “You’re a pretty nasty piece of work” jibe smacked me as being especially out of order.
As for the issues he and the BBC decided to quiz Boris on, voters have heard these at two elections and made clear they have no interest in them.
Why do the BBC think a casual Sunday morning, UK-wide audience is any more interested in tittle tattle, gossip and decades old tales than Boris’s employers proved to be?
What is it that the future citizens of Boris-land heard today about their would be leader? An insight into his financial prudence? His policy coherence? No, merely that he once had a conversation with a friend that he may have since come to regret.
Big deal, Have I Got News For You told them that years ago.
