Flannelled Fool Spin Stupidity

The leaders of the three largest Westminster parties - by number of MPs returned in 2010, before anyone asks - were grilled separately before an audience of Real Voters yesterday evening by Dimbleby Major in a BBC Question Time special. There were few memorable moments: all were accused of dishonesty, there was a significant amount of healthy scepticism, and so it was down to the spin.

Behold a stuffed shirt of no fixed stupidity

And on the right, there was a combination of the wacky, the infantile, and the downright stupid on view. One magnificent example came from the Sun’s non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn, who looked at his own paper’s “Twitter Worm”, saw that, overall, Mil The Younger had come out better than Young Dave, and concluded “Interesting. Labour (+ Tories less so) did a good job at rigging #bbcqt Twitter worms tonight”.

And how does any one party “rig” a Twitter worm? I can’t say this with any subtlety Tom (pace Billy Connolly). That’s a straight-A f*** right off. Whatever price you got when you sold your soul to Creepy Uncle Rupe wasn’t nearly enough. Things chez Sun got worse, as PR spinner Dylan Sharpe, scratching around for something to say, had to resort to sneering at Miliband losing his footing as he left the stage after his grilling.

“4,200 tweets per minute … Massive engagement … Everyone talking … Good result #bbcqt …The moment? Ed tripping on the stage”. Perhaps Rupe has a private zoo with a performing seal called Dylan: it would certainly be more entertaining than the leering creep doing his downmarket PR. But the star of the spin show, for a combination of brass neck and stupidity, was the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole.

Master Cole was in magisterially thick (and loud with it) form as he announced “Official: Miliband well and truly thumped by Cameron tonight. Absolutely brutal result from Digital Contact”. That his Tweet was timed before Miliband had finished did not seem to occur to him. Jonathan Haynes tried a little gentle nudge in the direction of reality: “Harry, look at the the x- axis on that” (the X-axis ended at 2030 - when Cameron walked off).

The penny failed to drop, as Cole responded - still before Miliband had finished - “yes, really useful to show the extent of the division. Great data journalism”. Er, hello? That would be the Y-axis. Haynes remained in gentle persuasion mode: “no, it only goes up to the point Cameron came off the TV - unsurprising little mention of Miliband until then”. These numbers and charts are difficult for some pundits, aren’t they?

Sam McKee had seen enough, and put Cole straight: “You don't even know which one IS the x-axis, do you?” He might wish to say that - I couldn’t possibly comment. Master Cole is good at shooting his mouth off, but all too often there is precious little engagement of brain to back it up. The idiocy level displayed here is so serious that he might as well change his name to Terry F***witt and have done with it.

And he calls himself a journalist. Any real journalists not feel insulted? You should do.