Yes, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: David Cameron’s bewildered, stumbling, confused, squirming, befuddled, painful TV interview with broadcaster Martin Popplewell is now available to view on YouTube – over 17,000 people have watched it to date.
LDV highlighted the footage late Tuesday. To give them their due, ConservativeHome didn’t shy away from it either.
The Tory blogger Iain Dale loyally attempted to gloss over Mr Cameron’s dire performance, desperately claiming “I think the inherent problem with the interview was that Cameron didn’t know if he was giving a print interview or a film interview”. Sure thing, Iain – I can see exactly how the confusion arose. After all which senior politician hasn’t wondered, when being interviewed two metres away from a three-person camera crew, “Is this being filmed?”
And Paul Staines’ right-wing Guido Fawkes blog decided to ignore it altogether. Quite right, Paul: much better to devote yourself to your forlorn campaign to persuade people Vince Cable doesn’t understand economics. Good luck with that one – I think your crusade has a way to go.
For those who haven’t yet seen it, then, here is the footage of David Cameron going into meltdown in front of the TV cameras:
(Also available on YouTube here).
Enjoy.
8 Comments
“I think the inherent problem with the interview was that Cameron didn’t know if he was giving a print interview or a film interview”
So Cameron is a novice media performer now, is he?
What does that matter Paul? An interview is an interview and he was being filmed.
Human rights and equality should all be a free vote as they are entirely personal.
Sorry. I was being ironic. Iain Dale is always saying that Cameron is a superb media performer who is completely at ease with the new media environment but now he is implying that he is such a novice that he can’t cope with being filmed by people employed by a newspaper. The reporter didn’t have a spiral topped notepad and stubby pencil (and presumably wasn’t wearing a trilby hat with a card saying “PRESS” in the hatband), so it confused him and sent him into meltdown, poor thing.
Now I’ve had to explain it, it obviously wasn’t a very clever remark by me. Agree 150% on the equality point.
Sorry – one further point – Yes, equality issues should be a free vote, but any truly modern, liberal parties, apart from the BNP, should really have parliamentarians who vote positively for equal rights without blinking. This shows that although Cameron mights say he’s changed, he hasn’t changed his party from the old “nasty party”.
I’m not sure why matters of human rights and equality should always be a free vote. If a party’s manifeso (like ours has) contains commitments to certain policies (like scrapping Section 28), then MPs should not be free to vote against the manifesto on which they were elected. I’m not saying it should be a three-line whip, but I don’t think it’s wrong to have something which says “this is the party’s position on this matter, and if you vote against it, you are voting against the party’s position”.
Unfortunately Iain Dale’s take is as much bollocks as Cameron’s claims to have changed the Conservative Party. Cameron can hardly not have known about the Lithuanian Section 28 vote – it happened during the Tory Party conference in Manchester IIRC, and there were protests about it at the time, including Stonewall boycotting their LGBTory fringe event.
Despite having some homophobes who don’t support our party’s constitutional commitment to equality, the Lib Dems still have an unparalleled record on LGBT rights.
Blimey. That is excrutiatingly embarrasing for Cameron. It is quite an indictment that he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.
I actually started feeling a bit sorry for him as you could see him really struggling to work out what the right line was. However I should not be so soft on him. The man is trying to become our next Prime Minister in a few weeks time and on an issue fundamental to civil liberties and human rights like this he should not find it so difficult to answer questions.
He had better hope he doesn’t cave like this in any of the leader debates or he will be toast.
I still find it odd that there is absolutely no mention of the incident on the BBC News website what so ever. Channel 4 News were really headlining it, but the BBC can’t even muster an article 2 days later?
The really is a true full blown meltdown isn’t it. He actually stops taking at one point and you can see that he’s figured out that what he says makes no sense and trying to work out how to get himself out of the mess he’s in lol
2 Trackbacks
[…] Stephen Tall comments: Sure thing, Iain – I can see exactly how the confusion arose. After all which senior politician […]
[…] secondly, a pair of Cameron clips. The first from his recent stumbling interview with Martin Popplewell for Gay […]