Aides to PM Gordon Brown are said to be furious that he was sandbagged, during an interview with Andrew Marr, on BBC1, when asked whether he is taking prescription painkillers.
Marr said:
“A lot of people in this country use prescription painkillers and pills to help them get through. Are you one of them?”
The PM relied:
“No. I think this is the sort of questioning which is all too often entering the lexicon of British politics.”
There has been much speculation over the last couple of weeks about the subject (I wrote a post 2 weeks ago) but until today, it seemed that no-one from the mainstream media was prepared to actually ask the question directly.
Whether this is because the media machine at Number 10 had deliberately tried to suppress such an enquiry or whether it was because none of the favoured political commentators wanted to risk their controlled access to the PM, we cannot be sure.
However, it is a justifiable enquiry to make and one to which we should all have the right to an answer.
If the PM is to survive until the next election and beyond, he needs to come out fighting and forget the scripted answers that his advisers prepare for him before interviews. He needs to ‘shoot from the hip’ and look like he is in control.
If he does that, then we might start to think of him as a worthy leader after all!
