If you ask broadcasters ‘why do you present our elected politicians as lying slimeballs?’ they will tell you that they have to expose the lies and half-truths of politicians on behalf of the people.

If you ask the politicians why they all peddle the same line, they will tell you that any deviation from their party political line will be seen as a ‘gaffe’ by the media. In extreme cases, a major gaffe could cause them to be immediately sacked, or – more likely – their party political machine will begin to keep them off the airwaves, as they are weak on ‘message discipline’.

Who loses out in all this? The vast majority of the electorate outside the Westminster village who do not understand the rules of the ‘gaffeocracy’ – that’s who.

The sad truth is that that most people do not trust a word any politician says on virtually anything. The expenses scandal and the response to it did not ‘lance a boil’. I have been going out on the doorstep for the Labour party for 35 years now, and, though there was never a mythical golden age when we were welcomed with open arms, there used to be a grudging acceptance that we were not self-seeking salespeople on the make, but volunteers giving up our time because of our strongly held beliefs, even if people totally disagreed with everything we then stood for.

I previously worked in broadcasting and, rather than always choose sex and celebrity stories, we would consciously pursue ‘the public interest’ and discussed political issues (usually) with politicians. The aim was not to discredit the political system. It was to make it work.

But the ‘rules’ of political interviewing today make little sense to most viewers.  The broadcasters who play this game seem to revel in it – they are desperate for any off-the-cuff casual but honest comment that can be used after their programme, typically to discredit the politician.

This situation is not inevitable. We need a ‘war on political apathy’. Politicians and broadcasters should not simply accept meaningless political interviews. Political leaders could far more frequently give their senior team an open opportunity to air their honest views. When the media (ie the narrow coterie in the Westminster village) cry ‘it’s a gaffe’, the leaders could simply say those politicians are giving their opinion but, ultimately, the party will have an agreed manifesto with agreed policies which it will present to the people at the election. Everyone knows Ken Clarke’s view on the European Union, and those interested knew Diane Abbott’s actual views on Labour’s immigration policy before she was, in her words, sacked from the frontbench for her ‘lack of message discipline’ in October. In the 1970s, Harold Wilson ran a cabinet where his senior ministers openly attacked one another’s views on Europe during the referendum.

Who are popular politicians at the moment? Boris Johnson seems to ignore his party machine all the time and people love him ever more. And what was Cleggmania about at the last election if it was not an apparent breath of fresh air from Labour-Tory machine politics? As a former Labour press officer working at the coalface, and currently as a budding local politician myself, I would of course play the game by the current rules – what is needed is that the media elite and the political elite agree on a courageous new set of rules.

For their part, broadcasters have to learn not to ‘sneer’ at politicians, and give the impression to viewers that everything any politician ever says is simply about gaining support for themselves or their party. They are certainly not deaf to the problem. When he was director-general of the BBC John Birt, one-time producer of the hard-hitting Frost-Nixon interview, said, (disapprovingly) ‘the media today resound with acrimony, allegations of incompetence, demands for resignations …’ In his 2012 book, Live From Downing Street, the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson writes at length about how the ‘result of the politicians’ struggle for control is too often sterility’ (the last thing any journalist wants). ‘Politicians feel that they cannot find the space to communicate their message at any length or to explore their ideas before they have reached firm conclusions. Broadcasters feel that politicians are not willing to open themselves up to scrutiny’.

The Westminster village gaffeocracy parlour game is not serving democracy well. For democracy to function properly, both sides have to work together to change many of the rules this game.

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David Poyser is a former Labour party press officer

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Photo: Curtis Kennington