Borkowski Media Trends: Red Carpet Controvsery | Commons Chaos & MORE

PLUS: Can Liz Truss break America? | Mark Borkowski on mooted Smart Phone Ban

Beeb’s BAFTA Boo Boo

There was a small furore this week in response to a clip of Andrew Scott’s BAFTA red carpet interview with the BBC’s Colin Paterson. Over recent months, Scott has presented himself as very much up for a laugh, during a convivial press tour with co-star and fellow Irish hunk of the moment, Paul Mescal (Barry Keoghan and Cillian Murphy make the full set).

But questions from Paterson on the size of Keoghan’s assets, as displayed in the final scene of Saltburn, elicited visible squirming, and Scott ultimately exiting the interview, albeit with a smile. Accusations that Scott had only faced this juvenile form of questioning because of his sexuality came in thick and fast, with some calling for the BBC to apologise for homophobia. It is worth noting that Sophie Ellis Bextor, who’s song Murder on the Dancefloor has made an epic revival after scoring the infamous scene, was asked similar questions, and answered without batting an eyelid. Although, given her very presence at the event was very much thanks to Keoghan’s naked antics in the film, it was probably not as surprising a topic for the singer. Awards season has brought to the fore, a debate which has been rumbling in the background for a while now: is the proliferation of social media influencers as “press” at film events diluting the industry? Another flurry of outrage arose when America Ferrera was asked a similarly distasteful question at the People’s Choice Awards, this time by TikTok star Harry Daniels. Therefore, it may be worth granting Paterson some grace, and redefining his descent to the lowest common denominator not as a gaffe, but an attempt by the ultimate legacy media outlet to maintain its relevance in a media landscape increasingly drawn to follower numbers over journalistic integrity. 

Crisis Averted, Crisis Created: Starmer’s Ming vase strategy brings down the political class

This week’s unedifying scenes in the House of Commons, highlight that often trying to rectify a crisis can create a new set of unforeseen problems.

Sir Keir Starmer faced one of his biggest challenges as Opposition Leader this week, when the Scottish National Party tabled a motion in an Opposition Day Debate for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The SNP designed the motion to trip Starmer up, hoping to expose the wider divisions within the Labour Party, as many of its MPs feel the pro-Palestinian sentiment from within their constituencies.

Starmer’s current strategy to victory can be best likened to a term coined by Roy Jenkins, he is cradling his Ming vase across a slippery museum floor, desperate for it not to smash and that means stifling any dissent from his Labour benches. But his actions this week had the result of smashing the museum, while keeping the Ming vase intact.

Starmer put pressure on the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to alter Parliamentary convention and hear a Labour motion on the topic first before the SNP’s motion.  Hoyle’s justification for the change was that the threats now facing MPs from protestors are too dangerous for him to not intervene. The result was that the SNP were sidelined, the Government lost control of what was going on in the House and the Labour amendment passed. One that pure analysis, the Ming vase seems to have been carried across the museum floor successfully.

However, the consequences were damaging to each side of politics, and nobody comes out of these tactics well. The Speaker, a highly respected figure, was the public face of this chaos and his reputation has undoubtedly been significantly damaged by the move, which saw almost 60 MPs call for his resignation.

But what has been revealed from this chaos is that firstly, one of the most important foreign policy issues facing the Government appears to be a political football and secondly, that the way MPs vote is being influenced by the dangerous and bullying tactics of those outside Parliament. Neither is an ideal outcome for British democracy, and both may do more damage as we head to a General Election this year.

Starmer may have avoided a crisis for the Labour Party this week and saved his Ming vase, but he may have just created a further one that damages the reputation of politicians more widely. 

‘In Liz we Truss’: Can ex-PM Conquer America?

Ex Prime Minister Liz Truss launched a PR assault on the USA this week, appearing at a series of right-wing political rallies and talk shows in an apparent bid to raise her profile in the lucrative market of American Conservatism.

This is a path trodden successfully by Nigel Farage and other less prominent political figures such as former David Cameron advisor Steve Hilton, but not yet by her predecessor Boris Johnson.

Truss’ playbook felt closer to Hilton’s than Farage’s. The simplified language of low tax, low government intervention, ethno-nationalism and quasi-conspiracy theories about establishment liberal bias came quite naturally to Farage who is also a comfortable television presence whose Englishness will have amplified his apparent intellect to a Fox News audience.

Truss is less of an idealogue whose politics only gradually slid to the right to chase whichever increasingly extreme segment of Overton window best suited her career advancement, so has had to make an adjustment: simpler and more right-wing. This is well within the scope of her abilities; throughout her career in British politics (which is still going on BTW – she’s still an MP) Truss’ political convictions have lurched from side-to-side like a petrified tourist trying to avoid being hurled off the top deck of the sinking Titanic.

However, when we consider that the tools at her disposal to execute this pivot include the natural charisma which saw her surrender the national spotlight to a decaying lettuce as a sitting Prime Minister, as well as the innate instinct for showmanship that instructed her to leave a 5-second pause after the phrase “pork markets”, it’s fair to anticipate that Truss’ bid to conquer America may be more Robbie Williams than Spice Girls.

That said she has been assiduous in telling her new target audience exactly what they want to hear. In the braying arena of the American culture wars, any conscript willing throw themselves unquestioningly onto the frontline will, at least initially, be accepted into the fold. The challenge for Liz is whether she can maintain this with enough zeal to capture the imagination of right-wing America longer term.

ICYMI Mark Borkowski shared his thoughts on a Guardian article reporting calls for Smartphones to be banned for children, sparking an interesting LinkedIn debate:

“Media and communications professionals should be paying attention to this growing movement.
 
The push for a ‘Smartphone-free childhood’ is the latest chapter in an evolving narrative that the overwhelming avalanche and decreasing reliability of the information we are presented daily is not just distracting us but harming our mental health and not simply curtailing our attention spans but affecting our cognitive abilities.
 
Contemporary media channels are saturated with content, struggling to balance quality with commercial viability, culturally and politically riven, and evolving at a speed that bamboozles those responsible for regulation and safeguarding.
 
So it’s understandable that a growing segment of the population are talking about switching off completely.
 
There’s the challenge for professional communicators. How do we contribute to an ecosystem that breeds positive and considered engagement that doesn’t spiral into addiction and disillusionment?
 
In my view, for governments, the answer isn’t banning smartphones, it’s educating people (not just kids) how to consume media healthily, discerningly and, yes, safely. We’ve all heard about Finland battling fake news in primary schools. Perhaps we could extrapolate that to the responsible consumption even of ‘good’ information.
 
For us media professionals it underlines our responsibility to ensure that what we put out into the world is intelligent, relevant and high-quality. That we’re widening people’s horizons rather than deepening their addiction, or risking their health and safety.”