Policy Research Media Morhamburn

This election, which as I always seem to be stating feels like it has been going on for an eternity, took a probably rather (when you actually think about it) unsurprising turn last night in the shape of Mr Brown’s ex-PR wife. Mrs Gordon Brown glided in a rather well-versed understated PR manner onto the stage of the National Television Awards (NTA). Officially tasked with presenting the award for best drama actor what she actually ended up doing was a Michelle Obama-like cameo performance for the nation.

Billed as a mother and charity campaigner I found myself racking my brains trying to work out who the producers were going to roll out – what were the recent campaigns that so profoundly touched the nation that their very personification was offered this prime time slot – to be perfectly honest I was rather underwhelmed by the answer and felt a little cheated. Yes Mrs Brown attends the fashion magazines’ fashion awards, she twitters and flutters around on peripheral ‘wife and mother’ issues but this merging of the worlds of politics and popular TV was a step too far. Or am I simply too old fashioned in believing there should be a good old separation of powers? Is there no space in society that the unaware masses can remain oblivious to probably the strangest election campaign ever? 

I don’t think I was alone in finding the experience unpalatable – as the camera surveyed the audience, blank expression after slightly veiled nonplus one reflected back from the assembled stars and celebrities. Did they feel she was stealing their thunder and would try to poach the best attendees for a post-event Downing Street tea party and love-in; was it that Haiti covered every inch of real life media and this was their time to take the masses away from the tragedies and hardships of reality; or was it that they too were simply bored of the blatant in-your-face electioneering that has characterised this election campaign? To be honest it was probably a bit of all three.

Yes such appearances are not really a new phenomenon. Tony Blair presented Trevor MacDonald with a life time achievement award at a previous NTA bash but this one was very much a thinly veiled covert mission to convert the masses, well the voting ones anyway. Is having a very pleasant wife a reason to vote one way or another?  Will the masses look at her and think more favourably of her husband?

My issue with last night was that it was another attempt to move this election campaign away from issues – those issues which affect every single one of us, both those who were perched on their sofas last night and those who weren’t; the issues that will affect our lives for probably (if the pattern of the last 30 years is anything to go on) the next 10 years. This election should be waged and fought on policy, on substance, and on a vision.