BoJo torn apart in BBC morning programme

[Martinus]

That's hardly a huge issue, is it? 

Yeah.  Reporter is the one job more scummy and dishonest than politician, so at least Johnson is moving up in the world.

The whole thing does seem to me like a really scrapping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel character assassination attempt.

I don't have any reason to like (or dislike) Boris, but his "crimes" seems to be rather minor. If anything, this illustrates the modern media's ridiculous tendency to expect politicians to be crystal clear paragons of virtue, with no moral failings whatsoever.

If today's media were present in the past, Churchill and Bismarck would have never won any elections.

[Josquius]

I'm disappointed, nowhere near as crushing as billed, it will be forgotten in a few weeks.

Yeah, me too, didn't really get too crazy, was pretty typical politician tying himself in knots stuff.

[HVC]

Misquotes and speeding tickets. If these are your political scandals then either your politicians are pretty good or your journalists suck

[Admiral Yi]

Isn't it quite common in many British circles to equate being a douchebag with good journalism?

Seems like this interviewer could have just said "i don't like this guy" and saved everyone a lot of time.

[Brazen]

Yeah.  Reporter is the one job more scummy and dishonest than politician, so at least Johnson is moving up in the world.

It's a whole other matter when your "misquotes" are, in fact, libellous.

Anyway, Boris described the interview as "splendid" and will no doubt come out the other end with even more fans, and potential PM voters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21926377

[Ed Anger]

I'd rather trust a used car salesman than a reporter.

[Admiral Yi]

It's a whole other matter when your "misquotes" are, in fact, libellous.

Please elaborate.

[Neil]

Yeah.  Reporter is the one job more scummy and dishonest than politician, so at least Johnson is moving up in the world.

Sorry, B.  At least you're not a lawyer though.

[Brazen]

It's a whole other matter when your "misquotes" are, in fact, libellous.

Please elaborate.

He "misquoted him in a way that had jeopardised his academic reputation." I'd say that was pretty defamatory.

[MadImmortalMan]

Is it really necessary to save one letter by using "BoJo", when if you say "Boris" everyone will know who you mean? How awful.

[Admiral Yi]

Is it really necessary to save one letter by using "BoJo", when if you say "Boris" everyone will know who you mean? How awful.

Rocky and Bullwinkle?  Boris Yeltsin?

[Richard Hakluyt]

It's a whole other matter when your "misquotes" are, in fact, libellous.

Please elaborate.

He "misquoted him in a way that had jeopardised his academic reputation." I'd say that was pretty defamatory.

It looked more like a typical example of Boris' laziness to me. He wanted to make a point in a newspaper article so he invented a quote and gave it as his godfather's comment. Unfortunately for Boris he got his facts muddled (probably from not paying sufficient attention in a history lesson 35 years ago) and (at least temporarily) annoyed a close friend of his family's.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't it quite common in many British circles to equate being a douchebag with good journalism?

Have you watched it? He seems fair enough in his questioning and polite throughout. Although Eddie Mair is, with Andrew Neil, one of my favourite interviewers.

The thing is Boris went on to this show to promote a forthcoming hour-long BBC documentary (which was broadly very positive) about his 'irresistible rise'. He didn't go on with any big policy announcements, or the Olympics to talk about so the only subject left was the bumps on his unstoppable rise and other interesting moments from the documentary. He was on the show the day before a documentary about his life and political career, but discussing that's a hatchet job

The problem for Boris isn't these issues, as many Tory journalists have said none of them are necessarily serious. The problem is the way he handled them. Boris's style is affable flannel and most journalists let him get away with it because he's reasonably entertaining and funny about it. If any other Labour or Tory pol said as little as Boris they'd be eviscerated by the journalists and a national joke (in a different way). I think what Mair did is expose that as flim-flam rather than a joke - which will worry other Tories. If Boris can't handle these questions, then how serious is he? Is there a there there?

The lethal lines seemed on whether he wanted to be PM and whether he could give a straight answer to a simple question:
'Permission to obfuscate.'
'Oh, please don't.'

Edit: And it's worth saying if Boris keeps on teasing - such as cooperating with this documentary - about his being a potential post-Cameron leader, then he deserves to be treated as a leadership candidate, not a political comedian.

[garbon]

As I kinda said earlier, Eddie Mair seems despicable. Here in a sensible country, he'd find his list of potential interviewees drying up.

[Sheilbh]

Also I thought this piece by Benedict Brogan (a long-time Cameron loyalist) rather interesting:

Pity our poor PM – the Tories are now in a post-Dave state of mind
By Benedict Brogan Politics Last updated: March 25th, 2013
From Tuesday's Daily Telegraph

"Why can't you just say the words? You want to be Prime Minister. Say it." Boris Johnson looked about him like a cornered animal. Eddie Mair smiled. The interview reached its culmination, one of those exquisite moments when a bloodthirsty audience wills the inquisitor to make the victim squeal just a little bit more. The Circus Maximus was never this much fun. The Mayor of London was being slowly, methodically eviscerated on live television, and we all lapped it up, because he was being asked a question to which we know the answer.

Politics involves no end of deception and dissembling, but one of the greatest examples is the public denial of ambition. Boris wants to be prime minister so bad he might just blow up one day. His mouth opened. It closed. "Go on, spit it out," we shouted silently at the screen. Just. Say. It. He didn't, of course. He gargled. He lunged in another direction. He told us what he preferred to say, which was the predictable guff about wanting his friend Dave to win the next election.

But why are we asking that particular question? Why the perverse pleasure? We have a Prime Minister who shows no sign of wanting to jack it in. There's a Leader of the Opposition who seems keen as mustard to have a go. In other words, there's an incumbent, and a willing substitute. You might think that we are more than adequately provided for in the ambition department. Yet we continue to cast around for a likely candidate, someone who will fire the national attention. For months we have been holding a rolling audition for a role that is not vacant, in the hope that it might produce a collective gasp of recognition. "Do you want to be prime minister?" We sound slightly desperate. It was the Boris moment on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning that revealed just how far advanced we are down the road to replacing Mr Cameron.

The reason why becomes plainer by the day. He has been Conservative leader for seven and a half years; Prime Minister for nearly three. Yet an aura of end days hangs over him. His party operates as if he is already a lame duck. A verdict on the Cameron years is setting like concrete around his feet. His premiership is marked by disappointments, changes of direction, a falling out with his MPs and his party, and an overarching sense of promise unfulfilled.

His central task, the very reason for the coalition with the Liberal Democrats, was austerity to heal the public finances. Yet the economy remains stalled, the debt only grows, and the big decisions about the future shape and size of the state are avoided. At a time when circumstance demands ambition in the national interest, Mr Cameron has too often defaulted to calculation in his own self-interest. Defence and infrastructure have been sacrificed to protect spending on pensioners and Third World countries. Energy costs are being deliberately driven upwards at a time when they are falling elsewhere, to satisfy a fashion for green poses that he actually abandoned ages ago.

His judgment has been erratic: sometimes inspired, as when he took on Brussels in the European budget negotiations; sometimes woeful, as when he entangled himself with Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks. He combines an effortless ease under pressure with a casual insensitivity to the needs of his MPs. He is teased for being chillaxed when others are stressed, but he doesn't take well to being contradicted.

A few weeks ago it was fashionable to predict a Conservative defeat in 2015. Now Tory MPs and commentators have gone one worse: they admit, grudgingly, that Labour's inadequacies and the calculated political blandishments of last week's Budget might just get Mr Cameron over the line and back into No 10; but – and this is truly embarrassing – they say it will hardly be worth it because the Prime Minister makes so little difference. When his own side begins to think even winning won't be enough to save him, he's in trouble.

The threat of plots against him has dissipated in recent weeks, in part because even the most irreconcilable MPs accept that defenestrating a prime minister in the middle of an economic crisis would be not just bad for the party, but for the nation. Mentally, though, Tories behave as if Mr Cameron has already been ushered into the departure lounge. Those with ambition are willingly taking part in the beauty contest that has been underway for months. If we added up every MP who has at some point urged a friend to let it be known – "quietly, you understand" – that if the circumstances were right... then we would reach 20 without too much difficulty. The Conservative conversation is no longer about Mr Cameron, but about who will succeed him in a leadership contest now predicated on defeat in 2015, and whether that person will be the one to put Britain back on its feet.

So far, no one has captured the collective Westminster imagination. Theresa May briefly came close with her sally in a thoughtful speech to the party's spring forum that addressed some of the big questions with which the Tories must grapple. Her record of mostly success at the Home Office has won her admirers among those who hanker after a modern-day Iron Lady. She has been criticised for being insufficiently entertaining over lunch with journalists – a badge of honour, some might say – though the more telling complaint is that, like Mr Cameron, her thing is efficient management rather than big ideas. We know no more: Mrs May retreated after No 10 voiced its displeasure and Michael Gove singled out her special advisers in Cabinet for disloyalty.

Of all the would-be leaders, she seems most ready for an appearance with Eddie Mair and a chance to answer that question. The Education Secretary is the other great Cabinet hope, and he in fairness has answered the question repeatedly, with charming protestations of his unsuitability which only serve to encourage those who think he would be the most suited indeed. Behind Mrs May and Mr Gove is a lengthening queue of current and former Cabinet ministers who would love it if somebody – anybody – could trouble to ask them if they too would like to be prime minister.

And beyond them are the men and women of the vast 2010 intake, the most interesting and relentlessly ambitious bunch of politicians Westminster has produced in a long time. Plenty of MPs will tell you this is Mr Cameron's most significant achievement: to facilitate the election of a new generation of Tories from whose ranks will come the one who will carry out the work of rebuilding that he failed to deliver.

We are rightly preoccupied by the terrifying circumstances we face as a nation. We are afraid and tired. But politics has never been more fluid. We are grilling the politicians who presume to lead us, and challenging them to come clean about their ambitions. The task of repairing the country demands resilience, imagination, steel and the ability to give a straight answer when asked. Mr Cameron, we should point out, has at times exhibited all those qualities. But he has been eroded by events and poor choices. Unless he can win back his party's attention, the search for his successor will only intensify.