Is the Brown TV black-out a deliberate strategy?
Will minimising TV appearances boost Labour’s ratings?
Another news cycle goes by and another day passes without Gordon Brown appearing on our TV screens – something I commented on here a fortnight agi.
I know it’s been the holiday season but as far as I can see he has made only three appearances in the past month – none of them contentious.
One was to pay tribute to Harry Patch, the last World War veteran in Britain, who died at the age of 111; a second to say he was he was “very proud” of the British troops involved in the first stage of Operation Panther’s Claw in Afghanistan and then there was the long statement without questions last weekend on the death toll in that country.
He was quoted during the Daniel Hannan NHS row but as far as I can ascertain he has kept off the TV for nearly a month.
I wonder whether this is deliberate and suggests a new approach by the Number 10 spin team. Maybe this is in response to focus group comments – who knows?
Will it help get Labour back – we shall see? But if his appearances are indeed a negative then restricting them to the absolute minimum seems quite smart.