Marr should apologise for grilling Brown about health

Roy Greenslade
30 Sep 2009

I admire Andrew Marr's work as a broadcaster and writer. He combines political sophistication and a deep knowledge of his subject with an almost boyish enthusiasm. Compared with other BBC current affairs interviewers, he is softer in approach, less hectoring and rarely, if ever, rude.

So it was a truly eyebrow-raising moment when he dared to ask Prime Minister Gordon Brown about whether he used prescription painkillers and pills.

I couldn't decide who looked the most embarrassed, Marr in asking it or Brown in replying. If Brown wants to win sympathy from the public, then the Labour Party should put that two-minute clip on its website.

He looked devastated as he responded by describing the problems he suffers with his eyesight, and I am sure that most people — including his political detractors — felt sorry for him.

So why did Marr do it? Why did a man with a long track record as a serious political interviewer feel it necessary to ask such a intrusive question when, to be honest, there was not a shred of evidence to support the claim?

On the programme, part of Marr's reasoning was that “everybody is talking about [it] out there in the Westminster village”. That isn't, even if true, a fair justification.

The Westminster villagers talk all sorts of nonsense all the time, but it doesn't mean that it should form the basis of an inappropriate question on a BBC programme.

Marr also implied that Brown's eyesight problems “might be a reason for standing down”. In other words, his medical condition might affect his ability to do his job. This, too, was a flawed justification because, whatever political shortcomings Brown might have, there has never been the slightest suggestion that his eye injury has been hazardous to his role as premier.

Indeed, even if he were to go blind (and there is no hint of that anyway), it would not be a reason to step down. It did not inhibit David Blunkett from being an effective minister.

Anyway, is Marr correct in claiming that the village people were the true source of the claims about Brown's health? We now know that it all emanated from guesswork by an obscure blogger, John Ward, who divined that Brown might be taking anti-depressants after receiving an alleged tip-off from a senior civil servant about Brown's diet.

According to Ward, Brown had been banned from eating cheese and avocados and drinking Chianti. Based on these “clues”, Ward decided that the Prime Minister might be taking powerful drugs, which suggested that he might be suffering from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Even in my time at The Sun in its rollicking, risk-taking days of the 1980s, such a claim would have been unlikely to have made it into the paper. I can hear the editor of the time, none other than Kelvin MacKenzie, addressing the news editor in conference should he have ever put the story forward (with expletives deleted): “Let me get this right. Some ******* guy none of us have ever heard of who admits he's a ******* depressive says he's been tipped off by some ******* snitch who claims the prime minister has stopped drinking ******* Chianti and must therefore be taking ******** drugs and suffering from ******* depression and some other ******** crazy disease. And you want me to publish that **** without a shred of ******* proof?”

Just because Ward's blog musings were taken up by other bloggers and then, sadly, by the Daily Telegraph's Simon Heffer, did not mean they were true. It was nothing more than a theory. It had no basis in fact.

No wonder that a dispirited Brown admonished Marr by saying: “I think this is the sort of question that is all too often entering the lexicon of British politics.”

I see that some commentators, John Kampfner for example, view the Marr question as a sign of courageous journalism, a refusal to accede to the cosy culture of mutual dependence that he believes exists within the lobby.

I'm not sure that is a true picture of the modern situation in Westminster but, even if it were so, his claim that Marr was acting in the public interest by posing his question is not borne out by the facts. Where was the prima facie evidence of Brown's ill health? In essence, it was a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife question.

We have come a long way since 1953, when the press owners of the time prevented their editors from reporting that Sir Winston Churchill had suffered a severe stroke.

Even so, in fairly recent times, the press did cover up a story about problems within a prime minister's family (and rightly so).

I also agree that a political leader's health is a legitimate matter to investigate, though it should not be a matter of wild speculation.

But let me also make clear that some of the backwash from the Marr episode has been particularly stupid. For instance, suggestions that BBC executives should vet his questions is nonsensical.

He is an experienced journalist and should be free to make mistakes. Otherwise, there is no point to doing the job.

Similarly, the even more ridiculous knee-jerk response by an unnamed Cabinet minister that the BBC's licence fee is imperilled by the Marr's interview, as reported in yesterday's Evening Standard, is also wide of the mark.

Yet Marr, despite defending his question as tough but fair, made a mistake, a single blot on an otherwise unblemished sheet. I am just sorry that he has refused to admit it was an error and apologise.