nineveh_uk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nineveh_uk) wrote2019-10-31 09:32 pm
nineveh_uk) wrote2019-10-31 09:32 pm
For those despairing at a general election campaign
Day 1 has involved Boris Johnson getting booed as he left his surprise visit to Addenbrookes* hospital, and a five minute impromptu speech to the media by a medical student who suddenly found herself confronted with him (and of course moved away for not playing along). 23 year old Julia Simons was definitely someone who knew what she was talking about.
You can watch both here.
Schadenfreude as such incidents bring, there is a serious point, and that is that a general election campaign doesn't allow the PM to hide. He can shirk PMQs, he can shirk parliamentary committees, but a PM in an election period has to expose himself to the public and to the TV cameras. He can't do it solely in controlled conditions, because that is obvious too. And as we've already seen, for all he may have been the toast of the Eton sixth form common room**, without that adoring audience, Johnson doesn't do especially well.
*The Cambridge university hospital, a major teaching facility.
**The very definition of an easy crowd, it seems.
You can watch both here.
Schadenfreude as such incidents bring, there is a serious point, and that is that a general election campaign doesn't allow the PM to hide. He can shirk PMQs, he can shirk parliamentary committees, but a PM in an election period has to expose himself to the public and to the TV cameras. He can't do it solely in controlled conditions, because that is obvious too. And as we've already seen, for all he may have been the toast of the Eton sixth form common room**, without that adoring audience, Johnson doesn't do especially well.
*The Cambridge university hospital, a major teaching facility.
**The very definition of an easy crowd, it seems.