I'd like to make Americans aware that no senior EU politician (the UNELECTED people who set many laws in the UK) has ever allowed themselves to be subjected to a serious critical interview in the whole 46 years that the UK has been a member of the union. And Andrew Neil and his colleagues at the BBC never comment on this or criticise the EU politicians for their refusal to be questioned.
Boris Johnson on the other hand has subjected himself to in depth interrogation by the media hundreds of times during his career, and he has appeared on many TV debates and interviews during this election campaign.
Imagine if in USA you had many of your laws set by a commission based in Guatemala by people you never elected and barely knew, and who were never questioned or analysed by the NYT or CNN, and you may understand why many of us in UK want to leave the EU and are sick of the self-righteous egos at the BBC.
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Boris's performance when interviewed by Eddie Mair shows what he's scared of. The interview is 6 years old now but exposes more of the man than any interview before or since. It's on YouTube, Eddie Mair vs Boris Johnson.
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Whistling past the graveyard, eh Mr. Johnson?
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During the leadership election Johnson (not ‘Boris’ .... please) was kept away from the cameras and microphones. Why? To lessen the opportunities for us to se him as he really is - an opportunistic empty vessel, devoid of any genuine or original ideas, in thrall to money. It’s the same now - they’ve got him on the shortest available leash. Along with the others like Rees-Mogg who seems to have disappeared, and Leadsom, Raab etc all... even more worrying, the lib dems had an open goal but shot themselves in the foot leaving us with a choice of ... well, no choice...
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Mr, Johnson might use Mr. Neil as a warm-up for dealing with Putin and Xi, but he will not need it in dealing with Trump.
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Boris and his handlers are not stupid. They know that sitting with Mr. Neil would be akin to an interrogation under the klieg lights. The entire Brexit Leave campaign and the untruths used to win would all be questioned. Boris's misfires in Parliament the last two months would be examined. The resignation of dozens of his MPs would surely be on the agenda. And of course the monstrous elephant in the room - the economic calamity of a no deal exit from the EU, which Boris is still pushing as an option. What about Ireland? What about the supposed new deal? How different is it from the failed deal of May's? What about the pound? What about the loss of free access to a market of five hundred million people? If I was Boris I wouldn't want to sit down either. I would have too much to lose.
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The Brits have their royals, while their media treat their politicians like public servants.
We have no royalty but our media treat our politicians like kings and queens.
Imagine Donald Trump, or Obama for that matter, submitting to serious questioning. Never.
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Johnson would be nuts to do this interview. Despite the media's dubious claims that the Tories would lose big in the next election, because the UK regrets the Brexit referendum, and now, more than anything, wants to stay in the EU, Johnson and the Tories are set for a huge win. Johnson should keep doing what he's doing and never trust the media, who are clearly out to get him.
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@MJG Where exactly did you find media claims of Tories loss? Nobody claim that.
@MJG
He is a liar and that is why we are out to get him - not just the media.
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On BBC Television (tax-payer funded -- socialism!), those who read the news and do interviews are credible, actual journalists.
America's (much vaunted) anchors and interviewers are not much more than well-painted dolls who know nothing about the subject at hand beyond their supplied cheat sheets.
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@GeorgeX If the BBC is regarded as tax-payer funded why do most people pay a TV licence fee?
Johnson isn't crazy, although he can come off as kooky and out of touch. He no doubt watched the Prince Andrew interview debacle, another aging, elite, upper-class white male and likely thought, "That will never be me." Opening oneself to a veteran journalist trained to flesh out the inconsistencies in your story is career suicide if you're not ready -- another lesson gleaned from Andrew. Curious to see how Johnson plans to navigate this challenge.
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Completely failure by the BBC which has fallen a long way since 1993 as the epitome of news independence. 1993 was the first Gulf war and the first war where journalists were not allowed free access to battlefields and had to rely on military videos and news only. The BBC used to preview its coverage with 'All information has been provided by government sources and could not be independently verified'. It came in for stick for not being patriotic enough, new governors were appointed and ever since has pretty much been part of the conservative establishment.
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How long before we hear Boris Johnson call out the British press as 'Enemies of The People'. I am guessing next week when he fails to have his Conservatives win a Parliamentary Majority to form a Government.
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Boris is a Prime Minister seeking re-election with a 8-12% lead in recent polls. As such he has more to lose from combative interviews than the other party leaders vying for the nation's attention.
Nevertheless, I think delaying and then avoiding Neil by playing the "diary" card was unnecessarily defensive. Boris could have weathered the storm (advertised by Neil as an interview about trust and integrity) and minimised the potential negatives whereas the avoidance has itself become a negative, perhaps as significant as the avoidance itself.
I would take slight issue with Mark Landler's piece and his suggestion that Boris has kept the opportunities for journalistic scrutiny to a minimum by saying that Boris did agree to two "Party Leaders" debates and has done numerous (for many of us, too numerous) interviews on various channels in various formats over the four weeks that the election campaign has been going on. I think many of my countrymen and women may feel there may have already been too much of Boris (and all the other leaders and parties) on TV and other media already.
Only one more week to go thankfully.
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The big factor missing here is that Johnson is currently far ahead in the polls. He doesn't see the need to take his message to the people, via combative journalists or otherwise. He just plans to sit tight and wait for an ineffectual opposition to deliver victory to him.
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@berkeleyhunt But, as we saw in 2017, polls belong to another era (2000 people sampled across the country). They do not take into account the shifting nature of those within constituencies. Here in Hove, there is palpable dismay with the first-past-the-post system when the nature of political debate in these times demands proportional representation so that people can find more in common than that divides them.
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As with our own President, Mr. Johnson appears to understand that conservative ideas are best dished via twitter, as they rarely withstand rigorous scrutiny from able journalists. Despots have always preferred speeches before carefully selected crowds of worshippers and articles planted in compliant newspapers to actually having to defend their ideas.
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