Gogglebox is better at Westminster analysis than every political journalist in Britain.
If Andrew Neil is the best interviewer and Keir Starmer is the best Labour leader that British politics has to offer, it may as well go to that farm where all our old pets go to have a nice retirement
Sir Keir ‘Keith’ Starmer, the knighted and blighted leader of Her Majesty’s overly-Loyal Opposition, got roasted harder on Gogglebox than Jenna Jameson in her glory years. But it’s alright because while Starmer will quickly tell you he is engrossed in whatever box set that polling says will ingratiate him with Sun readers, he does in fact spends his Friday nights in a special chamber designed to increase his resemblance to an actor playing the Prime Minister in a very special episode of Hollyoaks.
Starmer was bodied more than a professional wrestler by the Gogglebox cast which takes in a wide range of characters from across the country, most of whom would not be easily described as Corbynites and many of whom are not obviously Tory voters. Either way, they were not impressed by the fence sitting strategy, a tactic which has earned him the Guinness World Record for most splinters in one arse.
The analysis provided by the Gogglebox sofa sitters has long positioned them as some of the sharpest political commentators in Britain, highlighting how crushingly crap most of the Lobby — the group of journalists given special access to the Prime Minister and Westminster in general — actually are, but also how the wider political media in Britain is a supine as Waylon Smithers; in that analogy a naked Mr Burns is played by a lubed up and leering Rupert Murdoch.
Oh, and as if to further prove that Gogglebox is an equal opportunity roaster, the appearance of sentient ham and former Prime Minister, David Cameron, led one member of the cast to spit: “You can go get fucked and all.”
Starmer’s whooping on one of Britain’s most popular light entertainment shows came on the same say that Andrew Neil revealed he is leaving the BBC to join the nascent British Fox News, GB News, to project his far-right adjacent views without recourse to the BBC’s impartiality fig leaf. I’ve written about GB News and the rival News UK project with similar aims before; you can read that here.
One person on Twitter — an American who simply does not know better — believes that Neil is the best political interviewer in the world. If that is true and his ‘Jeremy Paxman fed entirely on swans and port’ act is the best we can hope for then I’m afraid political journalism should simply shut up shop and offer the unused space to a vape shop, after all those offices are used to being full of potentially toxic hot air.