The Question Time special last night was compulsive viewing, which threw up a dozen interesting points. But one particular issue that came up was the fact Gordon Brown was unelected as Prime Minister, and so lacked the popular mandate needed to lead the country. While there is nothing massively original about this accusation, it was interesting to see how Labour’s opponents are suddenly dredging this matter up again.
Leaving aside my own personal view on whether the accession of a new PM should automatically trigger a General Election, I think it is worth pointing out how little the majority of the media made over Brown’s coming to power in 2007.
The majority of the broadsheets, swept along in a pro-Gordon anti-Blair jubilee failed to address the constitutional issues at stake. As such, some two years later when there is a genuine Parliamentary crisis, the matter raises its head, rubbing salt into the wounds inflicted on our body politic over the last couple of weeks.
If the press are still to claim a role as the Fourth Estate, then we have a duty to examine complex poitical issues as and when they arise, rather than wait until things blow up and others are able to use them to fuel some already very fierce political fires.
1 response so far ↓
UK Voter // May 23, 2009 at 12:36 pm |
Fair point, but we must also ask whether the press echoes public opinion, or shapes it. I know which one I think it is. GB is not the first unelected PM in this country, but I believe he should be the last, especially when the party itself is governing with less than a third of the popular vote.