WHEN making his post-apocalypse zombie thriller 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle went old school to shoot the famous scene on a deserted Westminster Bridge. You know the one: Cillian Murphy wakes from a coma to find London looking like Glasgow on January 1.
Besides filming at dawn, Boyle's team asked drivers nicely if they would not mind waiting a bit to cross the SE1 thoroughfare. Amazingly, most motorists agreed. Oh for those more innocent, less fractious, pre-Extinction Rebellion days.
It helped enormously, of course, that it was summer and MPs and peers were on holiday. Westminster and Holyrood are ghost towns during recess, their corridors silent save for the noise of maintenance work. With no politicians around, normal political programming on television is suspended. So it was yesterday.
These, however, are hardly normal times. The papers were crammed with reporting and analysis of Boris Johnson’s first week as Prime Minister, and speculation over a General Election continued to mount. Plenty to keep the Sunday political programmes busy, but any viewer in search of ministerial answers was left to wander through the schedules like Cillian Murphy, crying out “Hello? Anyone there?”
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There was one exception: Sky News had Ridge on Sunday. But even it was sans Sophy Ridge, with Scots presenter Niall Paterson standing in for the holidaying anchor.
With a series of guests who would struggle to be household names outside their own front doors, the show made a good case for political programmes shutting up shop for the summer.
The only news lines which emerged came from an interview with Conservative party chairman James Cleverly MP, who said the Government was not going to initiate a general election (which still leaves open the chance it could be forced to do so), and that the party would be setting up an independent inquiry into alleged Islamophobia within its ranks.
Otherwise, Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth doubtless earned himself some Brownie points with the Labour press office for putting on a suit and tie on a Sunday and standing before the camera, but he added precious little to the national debate about Brexit or much else.
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At one point Paterson asked if it was the case, as had been reported, that MPs were now too late to stop a no deal Brexit. Mr Ashworth suggested speaking to the Number 10 aide who was said to have briefed along those lines, one Dominic Cummings. Oh, we’ve asked him to come on, Paterson chortled, but to no avail.
Cummings would not accept such an invitation but plenty would – as long as it was during term time. Politics programmes stand or fall on the quality of their guests, and if no-one is around that is another reason to pull the plug.
Everyone deserves a break. Politicians, despite reforms to their working arrangements, still work unsocial hours, as do the men and women who cover them. Voters in general could do with hitting the pause button on politics. It is not just Brenda from Bristol who is sick of General Election talk.
In any case, there may be no mainstream political programmes on, no Peston, no Question Time, no Marr, and the rest, but politics continues to be covered in newspapers, online, and on radio. So why the fuss?
Whatever else it does, the summer break raises questions about how politics is covered by broadcasters and whether methods are keeping up with the times. It has become accepted that readers, viewers and listeners want their news and analysis at a time and in a form that suits them. Most of the media has changed accordingly. The only major change in television, however, has been Peston's move from Sundays to midweek – a shift that has paid off.
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Politics coverage on television continues to revolve around big personalities. With so many sources of news, and when anyone can be their own broadcaster via social media, you might think TV political editors and commentators are among those “experts” Michael Gove once dismissed as surplus to public requirement. Television does not think so.
But does the quality of coverage and debate really suffer because Robert Peston is sipping Rose somewhere nice or Laura Kuenssberg is on a cruise? Are we not done with the days of expecting one all-seeing, all-knowing person to have all the answers?
There remains an assumption among broadcasters that viewers like to hear from a trusted voice, an individual who can cut through the white noise and convey clearly what is going on. It is a big responsibility but that is supposedly why it comes with the big bucks. The BBC’s political editor Kuenssberg is paid between £220,000-£229,999, more than the PM and First Minister, and her commercial counterparts are thought to be on more.
Then again, politics since the EU referendum has often seemed to be one long exercise in proving that screenwriter William Goldman was right when he said nobody knows anything.
Do viewers really need or want yet more speculation from political editors? Perhaps they should go old school, like Danny Boyle on the set of 28 Days Later, and wait for things to happen before reporting on them. But how would 24/7 news fill all those hours then?
The fact remains that it is the stated policy of the British Government to leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal. The clock is ticking.
If this is not a time when Ministers need to supply answers to pressing questions it is hard to know when that might be.
Broadcast coverage of politics since the EU referendum was one of peaks and troughs. Before and during the campaign it was wall to wall. After that, a strange silence descended, years passed, and suddenly Theresa May had a deal that needed she had to get through parliament. By the time problems surfaced there was no time to sort them out.
Here we are today, 87 days to Brexit, and the same sense of denial is taking hold. It is quiet out there in TV land. Too quiet.
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