The political interview as farce

Nick Robinson interviewing Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, about his boss' future was a case study in the ridiculous.

Previously: Polanski is painted as a monster; Farage escapes proper scrutiny

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The question of the day is how long it will be before Keir Starmer is no longer Prime Minister. The man given the hospital pass of heading out on the media round for the government this morning was Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, a man almost as robotic as the boss he serves.

His encounter with Nick Robinson on the Today programme was such a perfect example of a politician in evasion mode. The interview was so ludicrous that I wanted to preserve it here and subject it to some analysis as we wait to see if the UK ends up with its 7th Prime Minister in 10 years.

Robinson opened the interview by referring to comments from the Labour peer, Baroness Margaret Hodge, who had just been on the programme:

What’s your answer to Margaret Hodge — Baroness Hodge — there, ‘If you lose the confidence of the people you must listen, you must reconnect, you must build trust’?

Jones replied — and you’re going to see the word “look” quite often in this transcript as its his favourite verbal tic:

Look, I mean, I agree that for people listening to this show, getting up every morning, going to work, doing the right thing for their family and their community and for our country, they want a government that is getting on with the job. That’s what we were elected to do less than two years ago with Keir Starmer as our Prime Minister, a huge majority of over 400 Labour MPs in the House of Commons, and that’s what’s front of our mind today. Now obviously there’s an internal conversation to be had within the Labour Party about the election results last Thursday and what lessons we might learn from that and how we build to win the next election in 2029, but I, for one, and I know all my ministerial colleagues, are going into the office this morning to get on with the job of delivering a better country for people.

Anyone remotely paying attention to the machinations of the government and wider Labour Party over the past week knows that “getting on with the job” has not been their focus. Rather, to borrow a line from The Thick of It, they’ve been “bobbing around like Emperor penguins trying to swap an egg”. It’s worth noting the order of Jones priorities: winning the election in 2029 comes top, with “delivering a better country” trailing behind it.

Robinson followed up by trying to get Jones to answer the question he’d actually put to him, rather than the one he would have preferred to hear:

If you forgive me that’s a important answer but it’s not really an answer to the question. The question was: If you lose the confidence of people, must you show that you listen and reconnect? Not get on with the job, because the whole point is that people don’t like the job as it is currently being done. They want change. Now, is the Prime Minister this morning, listening to colleagues like Margaret Hodge — perhaps, if she’ll forgive me, more importantly like the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who are not his enemies, but do think he needs to think again about saying that he will fight on and even suggest he’ll be there year after year after year?

It was a wasted effort as Jones continued to answer the question in his head:

Well look, the public elect the government in Westminster at a general election. As I say, we had that in 2024, the Labour Party received a very significant majority to get on with the job of leading this country. I recognise though that many voters across the country didn’t feel able to vote Labour in the local elections last Thursday and we’ve got to understand that and listen to those voters. That’s true. And we need to do that in order to be able to assure ourselves that we can win re-election in 2029. There’s no denying that.

Notice again that the minister was regurgitating statements of fact and turning the rejection of Labour at the local elections into a mild disappointment (“didn’t feel able to vote Labour…”) rather than something ultimately more visceral and particularly focused on the personality and performance of the Prime Minister.

Robinson tried again with more direct question:

Is he this morning listening to colleagues who think he needs to set out a timetable for his departure?

Jones countered with some arithmetic, which has been changing again over the morning and not in the Prime Minister’s favour:

Well look, it’s right that Keir, as the leader of the party, listens to colleagues, irrespective of what view they might have. Obviously around 70 colleagues yesterday came out in public with a whole range of different views actually. They didn’t have a unified view of what they would like to happen. But the vast majority of the parliamentary Labour Party — as I say, we have over 400 Labour MPs and all of our ministers — are very clear we should be getting on with the job we were elected to do.

Whenever a politician insists that are “getting on with the job”, you can be certain that they are entirely distracted from the job. The job is so far in the distance that it has become a blurry dot, entirely hidden by the haze of gossip and intrigue.

Faced with another barrage of bland verbiage, Robinson went more specific:

So the Prime Minister has made up his mind how to respond has he? Or is he still considering how to respond to these representations? Including, if I could just repeat, from the Home Secretary, not from his enemies.

In response, Jones retreated to repeating what Starmer said in his poorly received (and umpteenth attempted) reset speech:

The Prime Minister was very clear yesterday that he’s not walking away because we understand…

At this point, Robinson moved from what the Prime Minister said to what the man in front of him actually knows:

Well, he was clear yesterday, but what we’re wondering is whether he’s still clear today because an awful lot has changed.

Do you know, as you speak this morning, Mr Jones, whether the Prime Minister has made his mind up how to respond to close allies, to supporters of him, to people who are not factionally opposed to him, who say he should now come forward with a timetable for his departure?

Look out, here comes the word ‘look’ again as Jones attempts to move the focus of the interview from the current chaos in Labour to the previous chaos under the Tories:

Look, the premise of the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday still stands, which is: We know what political instability results in. It results in higher government debt costs, it results in economic instability, it results in a lack of focus on the things the public want their politicians to be focusing on. We experienced that under the Conservatives, from Theresa May to Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak. And Keir Starmer has always said that we need to put the country first. That’s what he did at the election and that’s what he’s getting on and doing as the job of Prime Minister today.

Boil all those words down to the bones and what you’re left with is Jones repeating that the Prime Minister doesn’t want to resign, won’t resign, and nobody is going to make him resign. It’s not remotely convincing.

Sensing the potential for a breakthrough, Robinson doubles down:

Has he, to your knowledge, made up his mind how to respond to the calls on him to set up a timetable for his departure?

And Jones responds by doubling back to his previous answer:

The Prime Minister couldn’t have been clearer with us yesterday that he is not walking away…

At this point, the situation is so silly that Robinson has to call it out:

I’m so sorry, Mr Jones, but you know and I know that simply repeating what the Prime Minister said yesterday after we now know that very senior cabinet ministers are telling him it was not good enough, it’s not going to wash. Now, if you don’t know, that’s fine. You may not know the answer. It may be that this is a decision he’s taking, quite possibly with Vic, his wife, and is not one he’s told you yet. But you can’t come on and just pretend that what he says a day ago simply stands, can you?

Here we get Jones trying to reframe the question of whether the Prime Minister can continue in his job as simply a bit of a scuffle in the Labour Party:

Well, look, you’re asking me what the Prime Minister’s view is and the view he’s given us in public in his speech yesterday is the view he has. Now, obviously he’s engaging with colleagues, it’s right that he does that as the leader of our party. But, as I say, this is an internal party discussion about how we rebuild from what was a set of really poor election results for us last Thursday so we can win the general election in 2029.

There’s a reason why Jones tried this reframing and we’ll see it later in the interview.

For his part, Robinson tries to push the minister beyond the relatively safe ground of the speech and into a discussion of what comes next:

But do you accept he’s has got a decision to make today, rather different from the decision that was made before delivering that speech. He now has to decide whether to defy calls — even from the top of his own Cabinet — for him to spell out his future?

Here’s where Jones gets really ridiculous, pretending that the elephant in the room at the Cabinet meeting will be ignored completely; they’ll throw a blanket over it and pretend that it’s simply a comically over-sized occasional table:

Look, the Prime Minister is getting on with the job, that’s why Cabinet is meeting this morning to get an update on the situation in the Middle East and what it means for our economy here at home. We’ve got the King’s Speech tomorrow, as you’ve alluded to previously, the bills that we’ve been working on as a whole Cabinet to bring forward in the second session to be able to deliver the promises we made in the manifesto in 2024.

Robinson doesn’t let that transparent attempt at deflection stand:

Just to be clear: Are you suggesting that when Cabinet meets today, you will ignore the question that everybody else is discussing, which is whether Keir Starmer is going to set out a timetable for his departure?

And now Jones pulls out one of the old classics of the political interview: an appeal to what the politician has decided the audience actually want to talk about:

I think your listeners at home would much rather know what the government…

Robinson bats that away directly:

I think they’d like an answer to the question, actually… That’s why we do interviews.

But Jones thinks he can keep the distraction going by introducing a raft of other important issues that are not the focus of this particular conversation:

I’m just going to challenge your assumption, actually, if I may. Because I think the public are much more worried about the implications for energy bills, for inflation, for food prices, about the involvement or otherwise of our armed forces in a conflict we didn’t never wanted to happen in the first place…

Robinson’s accepts those points and brings the interview back to the issue at hand:

But Mr Jones, forgive me, as you made clear, changes of Prime Minister dramatically have an impact on people listening to this programme. And I’m not disputing what you’re saying is correct. It is not me who wants to talk about the future leadership of the Labour Party. It is, and I repeat, the Home Secretary herself who has said it, along with 70 MPs, along with a series — more than a handful of people — who are in the junior ranks of the government. So can I just ask you again: Will the Cabinet discuss the Prime Minister’s future this morning?

Here’s where Jones tries to bring back that reframing he tried earlier and it’s the point at which he tips over into utter ludicrousness, dismissing the question of the Prime Minister’s future in his job as “a Westminster bubble story”:

Look, I think we’re going to have to disagree agreeably. I understand a Westminster bubble story is important, there are rightly issues we need to be able to discuss as the Labour Party, but I do strongly reject the idea that the public really want to know about the internal ups and downs of Labour Party politicians.

There are plenty of things that happen in Westminster which do not deserve attention outside the bubble but whether the Prime Minister is getting the boot is one of those stories that definitely pop it.

Here’s where Robinson makes himself the voice of the listener:

What, they don’t want to know who their next Prime Minister is? They don’t want to know whether Keir Starmer will survive the day?

Jones replies, while Robinson asks him, “Will he be Prime Minister at the end of the year?” in the background:

Look, the Prime Minister is Keir Starmer. That’s what people elected at the last General Election… look, we can play fantasy politics as much as you like. But I just think it’s right to recognise — and I would suggest that I think you normally do — that what the public care about is the future of our country. And that is what the government is getting on with delivering.

Jones’ attempt to deliver a sort of criticism sandwich with a weak compliment filling doesn’t work. Robinson continues, with his own bit of faux-sympathy, to press:

But are you saying to people this morning — look, I understand the difficulty you’re in, I really do because sometimes these are very painful, they’re deeply personal conversations and you can’t get ahead of decisions you don’t know are being taken while you’re being asked to come out on the radio and bat for the team, as it were — but, you’ll understand, that obviously people today want to know whether there is a chance that their Prime Minister will stand down, if not in the immediate hours to come or days, but, you know, perhaps in months to come. I take if from what you’re saying that you don’t yet know the answer to that question.

Jones can’t say that he doesn’t, in fact, know what Starmer is thinking so he returns to the same old points he’s been recycling throughout the interview. He’s getting on with the job of saying he’s getting on with the job:

Well look, I’ve told you the Prime Minister’s view. I know that you think, maybe, that yesterday was history but the Prime Minister’s been very clear about his view. He’s not walking away. He doesn’t want to go back into the chaos of parties facing inwards of themselves and not thinking about the future of the country, about the costs of changing Prime Minister as frequently as the Conservative Party did over the past few years. And so while it’s right that he engages with colleagues who have raised concerns about the Labour Party’s strategy going forward and our chances of winning the next election, it’s also right that he is able to get on with the job of Prime Minister as well as we are ministers…

At this point, Robinson pulls Jones up on a line he’d given in a previous interview:

Why did you say earlier, ‘I’m not going to get ahead of any decision the Prime Minister may or may not take’? Which clearly implied to everybody — and you now seem to be running away from those words — that the Prime Minister is currently having to make a decision about his future?

It’s a bit of an attempt at a gotcha and Jones tries to slip out of it by trying to suggest that there was a wider context to the remark and again trying to turn the interview onto the conduct of his political rivals:

I think I was asked about the next general election in three years and, as I say, there’s little point in engaging in fantasy politics… the problem when you do that is that you end up — from our party’s perspective — detracting from the fact that other parties need to be held to account too. We’ve talked about Zack Polanski’s council tax this morning, Nigel Farage’s dodgy crypto donations from overseas. These are the things that we need to be able to talk about when it comes to party politics.

Robinson pointed out — correctly — that Today had talked about both issues on the programme this morning before ending:

I don’t normally like to have the last word on an interview: The Cabinet’s cars were at Downing Street yesterday and they weren’t talking about the King’s Speech, and they weren’t talking about war, they were there to talk about the Prime Minister’s leadership.

That is the political interview as farce. Jones may have left the studio feeling like he had won because he didn’t provide any new information or give any indication of what the Prime Minister will do next but he could only have looked like more of a clown if he’d walked in with a full face of greasepaint on. Robinson’s final remarks just highlighted how detached from reality everything the minister said in the preceding minute had been. What do these encounters give the public other than a sense of a political class with nothing but contempt for them?

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