A daily newspaper’s chief reporter has accused Theresa May of being “inept” after a brief interview with the Prime Minister which he compared to “speed-dating”.
Martin Shipton, of the Western Mail, has taken Mrs May to task over the interview, for which he was told he could only submit a single advance question for her to respond to the day before it took place.
However, Martin went on to ask three further questions during the interview itself before being “edged towards the door”.
Martin met the PM near Cardiff as part of her four-nation Brexit tour of the United Kingdom – which took place to mark exactly 12 months before the UK’s departure from the European Union.
In a comment piece for the Mail’s online sister title Wales Online describing his experience, he wrote: “Speed-dating used to be confined to singles’ events at nightclubs or cheap TV programmes.
“It wasn’t meant to make the transition to political journalism, but these days it seems to be a preferred means of engagement for the Prime Minister and her advisers.
“If Theresa May wanted to convince me that she’d cracked Brexit, she could hardly have gone about it in a more inept way.”
Martin said that he became “aware that I had outlived my welcome” in between the first two unrehearsed questions he asked, adding Mr May’s “fixed smile had disappeared”.
He wrote: “When I started to ask another question about the revelation that Mrs May had intervened personally to stop the electrification of the main railway line beyond Cardiff to Swansea, it was made perfectly clear that my time really was up.
“‘Sorry, sorry, we’re really pressed for time,’ said one of the press officers. ‘We’ve really got to move on to the next one.’
“And that was it with the Prime Minister. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, but was edged towards the door.”
Last summer both Get Surrey journalist Zosia Eyres and Bristol Post politics reporter Esme Ashcroft wrote similar pieces following encounters with Mrs May.
Esme described restrictions imposed on her during a visit by the PM as like “being forced to stand in a patch of stinging nettles” and compared the experience to a scene from satirical TV comedy The Thick of It.
During the 2017 General Election campaign, Mrs May was also criticised by a number of regional media outlets over an “outrageous” lack of access – with Plymouth Herald chief reporter Sam Blackledge describing an interview with her as “three minutes of nothing”.
HTFP has asked the Conservative Party for a comment.
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Superb work Martin for pressing, proper journalist.
To be fair you can’t blame her advisors, May was doing pretty well in the run-up to the last election before she started opening her mouth and everyone realised there wasn’t a whole lot going on.
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Interesting comments by Martin and a good analogy used about speed dating. I suspect sadly that many of us can relate to his experience from being a reporter when a senior political figure has visited our patch and we’ve been afforded merely the most token of interview opportunities. Credit to him for persisting in asking questions to May.
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Many local news outlets are so breathlessly excited at having a real, live Prime Minister, like off the telly, on their patch that they go along with all the media management nonsense, which in turns breeds the complacency and arrogance on the part of politicians and press officers alike that Martin describes. If it were up to me, I’d just stop covering these shindigs entirely; if they want an advert, they can bloody well pay for one.
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Top work Martin, but I’ve one question: in all seriousness, who would WANT to speed-date Theresa May?
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She makes the likes of Major and Cameron seem positively statesmanlike…
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She’s just a pair of shoes and a head.
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Not politics, but in a similar vein…I was one of a small army of regional hacks once granted a conference call with Beyonce. We each got to ask one question, and that had to be approved in advance. My first proposed question was vetoed by the PR as too controversial.
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Cyril Smith, then a big name as well as body, once visited my newspaper back in the Dark Ages. I turned down the chance to interview him…
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The problem with today’s politicians of any political colour is that they forget that it is local papers who report on local affairs – boring for those based in London – but when you stop and think the voters are all “local” so instead of being London metropolis-based in their thinking they should take the opportunity of speaking to local papers about what matters to local people. On second thoughts that is perhaps too much to ask of them (the politicians) !! Bit like asking a well-known actor to go back to repertory. Silly me.
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My experience of MPs is that often they have little respect for local papers and use them when they need them for propaganda purposes. And over the years I have seen too many editors go along with this chummy arrangement. It is particularly strong in an area where most of the paper’s readers have the same political preference as the MP. No point in upsetting your readers by asking tough questions.
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