EXCLUSIVE: Ed Miliband “told BBC he knew nothing about Tunisia”
Posted on March 3, 2011The question of whether British politicians have got a good enough handle on the uprisings in North Africa is increasingly occupying the minds of political commentators. Against that background, I was recently told a fascinating snippet from someone inside the BBC which casts further doubt on whether Westminster is up to speed.
It goes a little something like this…
When Ed Miliband appeared on the Andrew Marr Show back on 16th January, he arrived for makeup beforehand, plonked himself down in the chair and announced “By the way, what’s been happening in Tunisia? I know absolutely nothing about it.”
A slightly shocked silence ensued, with the BBC staff present dually wondering a) how on earth he hadn’t been briefed for a major interview on unrest that by then had been running for a month and had in the previous two days led to the Tunisian President fleeing into exile, and b) whether they should prep Marr to grill him on it as a weak point.
As it turned out, for whatever reason Marr didn’t ask about the topic at all – but it hardly inspires confidence that Ed didn’t know about the topic and, more worryingly for Labour, just merrily announced that he didn’t to the staff of the BBC’s major political chatshow.
I should say at this point that this is single-sourced (albeit from a person who was apparently there at the time) , so it’s further to the tittle-tattle end of the news scale than the hard-copy-leaked-document end, but interesting nonetheless.
Tags: Andrew Marr, BBC, Ed Miliband, Exclusives, Foreign Policy, Labour, Labour Leadership, Leaks, opinion, Parliament, Politics, Tunisia, Westminster
Categories: Exclusives, Opinion, Politics, Westminster
“As it turned out, for whatever reason Marr didn’t ask about the topic at all……” Well, the Beeb don’t like hurting one of their own.
08.03.2011 13:09
” whether they should prep Marr to grill him on it as a weak point.”
Of course if Miliband had belonged to any other party the BBC would have been ‘crawling all over him”.
Not that I am alluding to any bias or unbias, of course!
08.03.2011 13:14
Not at all Witterer, who could think such a thing?
08.03.2011 13:19
You’d think he’d pick this stuff up from the LSE’s Ralf Miliband lectures
08.03.2011 13:51
The more that is known about the Miliband family the more the British distrust them.
Millionaire marxists, with fathers who fought for the Red Army & avoid Inheritance Death Tax should not be trusted – & I trust that the electorate will not elect the Unions man.
08.03.2011 16:01
if a leading Conservative politician had made such an admission do you not think that the BBC would have made something of the story but (if the story is true) as this is the Labour Paryty leader… nothing apart from your report.?
09.03.2011 07:47
Well , , maybe a rat was smelt about a rat , nothing like sowing seed to reap a question about something your well versed in ………just a thought
09.03.2011 10:41
More important why do the BBC never ask Labour what cuts they would make against the ones they oppose?
09.03.2011 13:47
Of course it could have been Ed being very clever having done his homework on Tunisia and hoping the Marr would ‘pounce’ only to be destroyed by a totally clued-up Ed. Personally I think we have someone telling porky-pies to have a go at Ed as the whole story seems like a fairytale.
09.03.2011 16:27
Reminiscent of Harriet Harman when entering the Question Time studio some ten years ago was overhead asking a flunky, “Remind me again, who’s Yasser Arafat”
09.03.2011 20:36
Maybe it’s a coded message. He can’t ask Marr to not ask him, but he can hint that he doesn’t want to be quizzed. Plausible deniabilty and all that.
10.03.2011 09:10
So little Ed knows nothing about Tunisia eh? Add that the the nothing he knows aboutn ecnomics, real life etc, etc.
10.03.2011 14:46