Hot mic action.

Gillian Keegan got caught running her mouth while ITV's mic was still on and now Tories (and their outriders) are whining.

Previously: Rashomon remade... with Rory Stewart
The scuffle between Janice Turner and Rory Stewart is a perfect example of how interviews are traps and interviewees are vain.

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One of the iron-clad rules of being interviewed for radio or TV, whether live or not, is that, while in the presence of a microphone, you should never say anything you don’t want broadcast. It doesn’t matter if you think the mic is hot (i.e. turned on, ooh err) or not. If you’re around microphones, only say things you’d be happy to hear played back ad nauseam by the most nauseating people in British media (yes, I am listening to Nick ‘Austin Allegro’ Ferrari as I write this).

Yesterday morning, during a round of interviews, the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, was recorded asking — in response to questions she considered too robust:

Does anyone ever say, you know what? You’ve done a fucking good job because everyone else has sat on their arse and done nothing. Any sign of that, no?

ITV News provided the following context for how the comments — described with tedious regularity as “off the cuff” by government figures this morning — were captured:

In the moments after the main body of the interview had finished, and as the camera repositioned for extra shots, Keegan - still wearing her microphone - criticised others and claimed the government has gone "over and above" in addressing concerns relating to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac).

By the afternoon — and following a swift outfit change — Keegan apologised, saying her comments were “off the cuff” (there’s that phrase again) and “unnecessary”.

She also claimed she wasn’t referring to anyone in particular when she talked about “everyone else [sitting] on their arse” and said in several media appearances that the interviewer had “pressed her quite hard”. And why should he do that? They were only discussing the chances of… schools collapsing.

In The Telegraph, Camilla Tominey says the quiet bit out loud by admitting how reliant on access political hacks are and how frequently they’ll keep things to themselves to ensure politicians remain onside:

… in immediately rushing to make the unguarded remarks public on social media, ITV News seemed to be cementing a feeling that has been circulating in media circles for some time now: that there is no point pandering to an administration in its final throes.

… Ordinarily, a broadcaster reliant on ministerial cooperation for its political coverage might think twice about turning over one of the most senior politicians in Cabinet, renowned for her closeness to the Prime Minister.

Elsewhere in The Telegraph, builder-phobic, bowtie-fiend and Thought For The Day irritant, Tim Stanley clearly wants to remain in consideration for an honour:

On telly, Gillian Keegan thought the camera had stopped and wondered aloud if people realised she was doing a “f---ing good job” while “everyone else has sat on their a--e.” Good to know we have an Education Secretary who not only understands teenagers, she talks like one too.

But she is liked by her colleagues. A lot of Tories turned out to support Keegan’s ministerial statement on the crumbling schools crisis, which is not this particular administration’s fault but has emerged because, for several decades, builders have been using a type of concrete modelled on the Aero bar. 

… One has to laugh. The state of the buildings has only come to light because the Government raised standards and chose to be cautious: it is paying the price for diligence. Yes, a roof collapsed in 2018, which is troubling, but no kids were present. Yet Phillipson’s statement conjured images of The Towering Inferno, with Steve McQueen rescuing Form 2b from a burning lift.

Ben Bradshaw suggested the Cabinet doesn’t care about state schools because they don’t send their own children to them, which was tasteless. 

With Stanley’s ‘Towering Inferno’ analogy and claim Bradshaw was being “tasteless” is fresh in your mind, consider that many other public buildings may still contain what much of the press is tweely calling “crumbly concrete” and the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is still ongoing. Tasteless? Stanley is an expert.

Inevitably, there has already been speculation that the hot mic moment was deliberate as Keegan attempted to distract from the revelation that her department spent £32 million refurbishing its HQ even as schools were not receiving adequate funding for renovations to unsafe buildings. Frankly, if it were a ‘dead cat’, the feline in question is still very much alive and wagging its tail.

People are able to keep more than one thing in mind. Keegan looks like an egotistical idiot and her department’s dodgy spending is being discussed. When the Education Secretary appeared on Sky News yesterday, Kay Burley asked her about the spending and she rolled out the now familiar ‘nothing to do with me, guv!’ explanation:

I don’t know, actually. I didn’t. I haven’t done it. Which offices? 

… I know that when I was last in the department, I was on a different floor and I know they are refurbishing some of them. I wasn’t involved in that.

Some hot mic moments have no long-term effects (David Camron humming to himself as he walked away from his resignation statement), others do (Gordon Brown caught discussing “that bigoted woman” - who was by the way), and some (Bush captured issuing the greeting, “Yo, Blair”) offer a telling behind-the-scenes insight.

Any debate about the morality of ITV News broadcasting the clip of Keegan’s comments is disingenuous; she was wearing a mic and standing in front of a camera that was running.

Ignorance is no defence in law and stupidity is no defence for interviewees.

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