‘Politics is show business for ugly people,’ said Paul Begala, famously. Westminster today, however, is more akin to a finishing school for aspiring media personalities. We live now in a new age of ‘presenticians’ – in which more and more political figures present their own news shows.
Turn on your TV and you could well be confronted by one of a dozen current or former MPs who are now anchors or regular pundits.
On GB News, there’s the husband-and-wife duo of Esther McVey and Philip Davies, and Lee Anderson MP just replaced his fellow Tory Dehenna Davison as the network’s resident ‘Red Waller’. Jacob Rees-Mogg has also joined the self-styled ‘People’s Channel’. At same time, across London on Talk TV, fellow Johnsonite Nadine Dorries will soon be grilling her onetime boss Boris Johnson. You can also catch Bim Afolami and Tan Dhesi as talking heads on Talk’s flagship late night show.
Skeptics will question whether such a blurring of the line between politics and the media is really healthy
If radio is your preferred medium, you can enjoy the weekly musings of Ed Vaizey on Times Radio or Labour’s David Lammy on LBC.
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