simon dunn: scriptwriter & comedian

The Queen arrived at parliament in a gold gilded coach, wearing a crown encrusted with jewels, and the first thing she said was that we need to save a bit of cash.

Well, the fourteen horse-mounted guards in their hand-stitched livery could go for a start. Not to mention the racist ventriloquist dummy who sits next to you.

Hope

The BBC were at great pains during the post-election negotiations to point out that the Queen tries very hard to stay out of politics. If our Head of State literally has no purpose, why do we still have one?

Because the Royal Family is good for tourism, Simon.

Fine. Then we should hand her a speech to read in which she announces that ‘her’ new Government will tackle the daunting deficit by privatising the Monarchy. They can fund their opulence by selling blow-up Princess Diana dolls, and those nudey photos of Princess Margaret.

HRH plc could be traded on the markets, and the CEO could be answerable to shareholders. Sod being a subject, I want a piece of the dividends.

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I’m fed up with political commentators opining that “the people just aren’t engaging with the election”. Andrew ‘Vomit In My Eyes’ Neill just said it on his heinous apology for a political show, This Week.

He continued on to say that “us in the media village are enjoying it, but not the electorate”. And that sums it up nicely.

The problem isn’t that we’re not engaging with the election; it’s that we’re not engaging with the coverage of it. But to the politico hacks like Neil, Robinson and Kuennesberg, there’s no distinction between the two. The coverage has simply become about itself.

Tonight’s debate was the epitome of everything that is bad about political journalism. The ‘media village’ lobbied strongly for the debates, not because it marked a new era in democratic government, but because it’s a much simpler story to tell.

We should buy them all toys and let them film themselves playing with them instead

Rather than having to spend time, effort and money doing some actual journalism, it’s much easier to sit in a studio with a dial group and talk endlessly about who won, forever on the look-out for a killer gaffe, or who looks prettiest on camera.

What gets lost in all this is that we are not electing a President. We live in a parliamentary, constituent-based system, where we elect our local representatives to national Government. The only ones voting for David Cameron will be the people of Witney.

Moreover, the idea of a political debate being something fresh is ridiculous – there’s much healthier, more vigorous debate every week in the Commons. These are politicians educated in the debate realm, and what we saw tonight bears no resemblance to what it purported to be.

So annoyingly, the coverage will continue to be about itself, burning up the fuel of tonight until the next one. What’s insidious is that not one of those hacks will be examining their colleague Alistair Stewart’s performance tonight, which was absolutely diabolical. They should be ashamed of themselves.

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