Last week, when Ed Vaizey declared that 6 Music should be exempt from these pending BBC cuts you’ll have heard about, he should not have sounded so odd.
Last week, when Ed Vaizey declared that 6 Music should be exempt from these pending BBC cuts you’ll have heard about, he should not have sounded so odd. Insincere, maybe. Opportunistic, certainly. But not odd.
I’ve only met the man once, true, and then for about nine seconds. Still, from the times I’ve seen him on TV, and from the amusingly rude emails he sent me once after I misspelled his name, I’ve always thought him the living disproof of the old myth that anybody youngish and Tory must have been strident, friendless and bald since the age of about 11. When he became a cheerleader for a trendy, off-beat music station, it should have sounded like the most natural thing in world. It should not have sounded how it did, which was like the Duke of Edinburgh asking to borrow your crack-pipe.
Eight weeks before an election, the battle of 6 Music ought to be where it all comes together for the Conservatives. Forget reforming the BBC for a moment. Forget the ideological debates about the reach of the state, and the limits of the private sector. Think demographics. When the polls see the Tories slip by eight points, who do you reckon those eight points are? They’re not suddenly Ukip voters, are they? They haven’t gone to the BNP. They’re not Eurosceptic climate-sceptics, yearning for a repeal of the fox-hunting ban and a bold and forthright position on flat taxes. Honestly, what madness is this? No, that eight points is the floaters. The ones in the middle. They don’t all listen to 6 Music, sure, but the ones who do are fairly emblematic of the whole.
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