Cos They Had a Bad Day

Cos They Had a Bad Day

Iain Dale 6:27 PM

It's not just Gordon Brown who has had a bad day today. Imagine, you're Health Minister Ann Keen MP. You and your MP husband are informed that your main home is about to be repossessed because it has been empty for months ... and then that nice Paul Waugh finds that you have charged some private healthcare bills to the taxpayer.

Is that the sound of someone saying"Brentford & Isleworth, Conservative Gain"? Or 

The Bradby/Bercow Spat For Your Delectation

Iain Dale 6:18 PM

At last the clip of John Bercow being skewered by ITN's Tom Bradby on last night's ITV News has been put on YouTube. We watched this at home last night and my non political partner, who is not given to swearing, turned to me and said: "What an arrogant ****". I have since reassured Mr Bradby that he was not in fact referring to him. :).

I've been known myself to take interviewers to task on the odd occasion, but then again I am not the Speaker of the House of Commons. If, as Speaker, you are going to do interviews, you have got to take the rough with the smooth and exude bon homie, even if you think the interviewer is asking disgraceful questions. Bercow's problem is that Bradby was asking the questions any self respecting journalist would have asked. Bradby only repeated the question because he was not getting an answer. To react as he did, demonstrates that John Bercow hasn't quite realised he needs to leave his argumentative side behind him - at least in public.