Is this an indication of things to come?

It is an indication of how much we have become accustomed to slick presentation and attention to the fine detail of how they look on the screen from the Blairs and Camerons of this world that today’s Brown launch comes as such a shock.

For the moment that Gordon has been waiting since 1994, the official launch of his leadership campaign, appears decidedly odd on TV screens because a large part of his face was obscured by the autocue reader.

Blair and Cameron would have spotted that immediately and taken remedial action. Not so with Gordon.

For all the talk about “policy being more important than presentation” simply is not the case in the tv age. Whether you like it or not the political choices of many are determined by fleeting impressions on the bulletins and Gordon did not help himself today.

This reminded me of David Davis’s speech at the Tory conference in 2005. It was the most important 20 minutes of his career and he blew it because he did not pay attention to the detail.

Mike Smithson