Sky News won the battle of the producers to book ministers for their programmes in April. The usually minister-heavy Today Programme drops out of the top three for the first time, while Newsnight rises up the rankings. Marr features a minister a week. The whole of ITV (The Agenda, Good Morning Britain, and ITV News) managed to get just three ministers in the entire month. Overall there were 44 ministerial broadcast appearances in April, expect that to ramp up when the referendum campaign gets going…
Ambitious ministers with an eye on the leadership provided seven new entries for our Media Minister Monitor this month. Top of the charts is Dominic Raab, a sound-as-a-pound Eurosceptic who has been attracting admirers in recent weeks. Mooted candidates Andrea Leadsom, Stephen Crabb and Penny Mordaunt have all received their first leaderboard position since MMM started in February. Gove was in the top 10 for the first time. In total, six of the top ten are Outers. Leave are winning the ministerial air war…
Here is the spreadsheet with all the ministerial broadcast appearances for March. The rules: we monitor which ministers appeared answering questions in interviews. Note this will not include doorsteps, only scheduled appearances.
There was an average of one ministerial broadcast appearance a day in March, as the government swerves accountability over the airwaves. By some distance ministers were more willing to appear on the Today programme than any other show or channel. Downing Street evidently does not fancy sending ministers out to bat when Andrew Neil or Andrew Marr are bowling. Softball interviews on Newsnight are for some reason much more popular…
In February referendum fever saw government ministers make 55 broadcast appearances, in March Downing Street entered bunker mode and the number plunged to just 35. The statistics show Craig Oliver is enforcing a “one minister a day” policy for broadcast appearances as they look to dodge accountability. Viewers are repeatedly being told the government refused to put anyone up for interview.
You know it’s a been a tough month for Downing Street when “Fireman” Fallon tops the charts. Fallon is always deployed by No. 10 as a safe pair of hands when things are not going well, and in a month of Tory splits and Budget flops he made four appearances. Nicky Morgan is – inexplicably – being used with increasing regularity. ‘Super’ Soubry remains high up the list as a Remain spokesman, while Grayling is once again leading the charge for Leave. The highly ambitious Dominic Raab, another Outer, is an interesting new entry. The submarine Chancellor’s Budget went so well he faced interview questions just twice this month…
