politics

As this RTS exploration of powerful moments in TV political interviews unfolded, it quickly became clear just how extraordinary 2020 has been, even in an era of jaw-dropping statements from politicians and startling TV encounters.

My alarm has been almost constantly set for 3:30am for seven years now. My body is so attuned to it that I almost always awake before it goes off. It’s now 3:03am on Monday morning and I’m staring at my phone, having just been happily dreaming about glaciers.

Question

Christine Lampard: Do you wake in the morning and decide what you want to rant about that day?

Answer

Piers Morgan: I used to run a daily paper. And the whole point of it was that, every morning, if you’re running a newsroom with 400 people, you have to get them going with your opinions.

So I think it was always in my DNA to be hugely opinionated about absolutely everything. I try to work myself into indignant rages on most subjects.

'I am one vegan sausage-roll wrap from being fired'

In May 2018, the top two UK parties, as measured in opinion polls and real votes cast in elections, were Labour and the Conservatives. A year later, they had been displaced by the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats.

One man’s journey during just three of those 12 months helps to illustrate this wacky new world of UK politics. In March 2019, he left one party to help create another, which started with one name, changed to a different one and then changed back. He then joined a third party, saying that he should probably have gone with it in the first place.

Beth Rigby is the stand-out political broadcaster of our times. This is despite the former print journalist having been on our screens for only three years. No one asks the acute, no-nonsense yet empathetic questions like the new political editor of Sky News. And no one does it in her accent.

She drops so many Gs that Rigby dreads party conferences in Birmin’ham. We worked together on the Times, where she was a scoop-winning media editor – and when I saw her first steps on Sky News I knew, as her bosses obviously did, that a star had been born.

Parliament is “a sick house” right now. That’s not a comment on the politics of the place but a diagnosis by Philippa Whitford MP, the Commons’ most senior medical figure. The SNP politician has a long career as a cancer surgeon behind her, and MPs aware of her medical background have been bending her ear to tell her of their anxiety issues.

Whitford says sleepless nights and persistent stress are rampant and she’s had MPs telling her of their inability to process information as a result.

Set in the halls of Westminster, the series follows Prime Minister Robert Sutherland (Robert Carlyle) and his Chief of Staff Anna Marshall (Victoria Hamilton) as they try to deal with a national emergency.

The pair must bear attacks from their political opponents, face family pressures and lead the COBRA committee, a team of experts and politicians, to ensure the nation’s safety.