Jeremy Paxman interview for Channel 4's Alternative Election Night

22 April 2015

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On May Thursday 7th, the country will go to the polls. With the political scene fragmented like never before, and the result entirely unpredictable, it looks set to be a truly historic night. On a day of political change, it seems only appropriate that Channel 4 is taking a novel, fresh and exciting approach to its coverage of election night. Comedians, politicians and special guests will all give their own take on proceedings, all under the watchful, headmasterly eye of the inimitable Jeremy Paxman.

Here, the man himself gives his take on the political situation, explains a little more about plans for the night, and reveals what he really thinks of politicians.

 

The election looks set to be the most unpredictable for decades. Are you excited about it?

I’m tremendously excited. I think it is – whoever you listen to – completely unpredictable. I couldn’t even tell you whether there’ll be a record high turnout or a record low turnout. Almost everything about it is unknowable in advance. It’ll settle down, I guess, over the next few weeks, but it is very, very exciting. And the stakes are quite high!

 

How are Channel 4 planning to cover election night, and what will your role in proceedings be?

That’s a very interesting question. I think that I’m chairing the whole thing. It will run from until sometime in the early hours. The content will change as the evening goes on. We, I think, will offer a service in which you will miss absolutely nothing, but it will proceed from an assumption that there are lots of things that people do not like about the way that our politics are working now. Rather than being on the side of who’s up, who’s down, which MP is in, which MP is out, we’re proceeding on the basis that the important person in all of this is the voter. So there’s quite a lot of material which will be about the issues surrounding why people seem to be so disenchanted with the whole process.

 

You’ll be presenting with David Mitchell and a host of other comedians. I imagine there’ll be a satirical bent to it all as well?

Oh yeah, yeah. We’re going to have a whole pile of people there. David will be there, Richard Osman will be there, there will be lots of comedians, there will be political guests, there will be psephological guests, but the idea is to try to make a new kind of coverage. A coverage that neither takes the process too unimportantly, nor too importantly. I firmly believe that voting is very important, but that voters have a pretty realistic appraisal of how seriously to take the promises made to them by politicians. It’s going to have a mixture if comedy and politics, but, as I say, from the starting point that we’re on the side of the voter.

 

A new style of election night coverage – will that be fronted by a new style of Jeremy Paxman?

[Laughs] I don’t know. There will be interviews. There will be serious coverage. There will be humour. For me the fun is working with a different set of people, with a different set of priorities.

 

Will it feel strange, spending an election night somewhere other than in a BBC chair?

Not in the slightest!

 

What’s your ambition for the night?

I very much hope that we will give every viewer the chance to know what’s happening, but also to understand that we’re appreciating it not from the point of view of those standing for election, but from the point of view of those who did the voting. I am under no illusions about how disenchanted people are with politics. I think politics really matters, but something’s gone a bit wonky with it.

 

How do you prepare for the night? What do you do in the way of research?

Currently, we’re working through a series of pieces which look at various aspects of how politics are functioning or not functioning in this country. There will then be lots more conversations with people who are studying it at much closer quarters than I am.

 

Bearing in mind we’ve got a very fragmented political situation at the moment, does that mean you have to plough your way through seven manifestos?

I suppose so, yes. Probably more than seven!

 

Blimey!

I don’t think I deserve any sympathy.

 

On the night itself, do you find it difficult working through the night? Or does the adrenaline and excitement get you through it?

Everybody feels a bit droopy at about 2 or 3 in the morning, don’t they? It’s perfectly normal - my ambition is usually to be fast asleep by then. But lots of people are still out clubbing at that time. I don’t think one deserves any sympathy for having to stay up - it’ll be a very exciting story, I think. Sometimes you have a sense in advance of how it’s going to go, from what you’ve seen happening, what intuitively you understand people to be feeling, and what the exit polls and other polls suggest. But there are always upsets, and there are always surprises, and it’s tremendous fun.

I think that democracy is a very precious thing, and a rather majestic thing. I just invite all those people who are thinking of not voting to propose us an alternative. There’s something very precious and very exciting about it. How collectively we decide something, and how we entitle people to take money out of our pockets, to decide whether fellow citizens will have to test themselves in war and the like – these are really important questions, and I, on the whole, think it’s rather better to do it by this rather odd process of putting an X on a piece of paper than it is by any other means.

 

What are your own memories of watching elections? Did you used to sit up and watch them on TV?

Yeah. We’re all realistic about the limits of political engagement. People who are politically involved are quite unusual, and they’re increasingly unusual – membership of political parties in this country has really dropped. The fascination when the men came in in brown coats to paint more numbers on the swingometer was a very funny moment – I can’t even remember which election it was. But it was based on the assumption that there were only two parties really fighting it out. That’s why you could get excited about the swing, with funny old Bob McKenzie, the Canadian. I’m not going to claim that this was something that was as popular as the cup final or anything like that, but it is a very dramatic story, almost whatever happens. It’s tremendously dramatic. It’s unpredictable. And we have done it. When you’re watching a game of football or a game of cricket, you’re watching 22 people on a pitch, and you have no control over it. But we’ve all had some control over what’s happened, or what will have happened, by the early hours of May 8th.

 

Obviously I wouldn’t dream of asking you how you’re going to vote, but have you decided how you’re going to vote?

Um… Have I decided…? I think I know how I’m going to vote, yeah. [Laughs] You can whistle for it if you’re expecting me to tell you. It’s a serious choice, and while my vote is worth exactly the same as that of the average village idiot – indeed, it IS the vote of the village idiot – that’s one of the singular strengths and idiocies of the system. The person who gives a considered judgement as to how they’ll vote, their decision has exactly the same weight as someone who would vote for a rosette based simply on its colour, regardless of who’s wearing it. This stuff matters, and I have thought about it, and shall continue to think about it, and when I do eventually vote, I will do so reasonably confidently. The only thing that I really wish we had was a box on the ballot paper that said “None of the above”. We desperately need that, and if we had it, maybe we’d start seeing different kinds of candidates.

 

Do you enjoy the cut-and-thrust of doing interviews? Did you, for example, enjoy interviewing David Cameron and Ed Miliband at the start of the campaign?

Yeah, I do enjoy it. It keeps you on your toes. Various people said “You were a bit tough on them.” I think the voters are entitled to a straight answer to a straight question. I believe that passionately. And if they can’t cope with some pipsqueak journalist then frankly they’re not fit to have the job, are they?

 

Over the years, who have you most enjoyed duelling with?

I’m not going to give you an answer to that, because the most challenging interview is always the one you’re just about to do. And if I started picking off names from a list, I would undoubtedly forget some, and give the wrong emphasis to others.

 

If you’re interviewing someone and you see them falling apart under scrutiny, do you feel any sympathy for them, or do you just think that means you’re doing your job?

That depends who they are. I very strongly believe that you should never use someone’s unfamiliarity with the medium – in other words, a television studio – to their disadvantage. I really think that is morally unacceptable. However, almost all powerful people in this country now have media training, in which they’re taught how to present themselves, how to obfuscate, how to get their point across. It’s your job to cut through all of that.

 

What do you think has changed the most about politics during your career in the media?

I don’t think it’s just because I’ve got older and more experienced that I find the type of people in politics now very different to the sort of people who were in politics previously. When I first started out as a young reporter, it didn’t matter whether it was Peter Carrington, who’d been through the last war, or Willie Whitelaw who’d also been through the last war, or Denis Healey who’d been a beach-master at Anzio, they had all done something else, no matter which party they belonged to. Nowadays it’s a career. That’s the biggest change. They might say “Being a journalist is a career choice.” Well, I suppose it is. But politicians are there as representatives, and it would be very nice if they were more like the people they represent. I’m in favour of term limits for MPs. I think no more than two five-year parliaments – that’s plenty for anybody. That way we’ll get a big turnover of new people, with new life experiences, coming through Westminster all the time. That would just be the start of it. I’d advocate taking advantage of the opportunity to renovate the Palace of Westminster, basically to replace it. People look at it and they simply don’t get why politicians behave there as they do.

 

A lot of the electorate see politicians as cynical, power-hungry and in it for themselves. Is that your view of politicians?

No, I do not think that, absolutely not! It’s completely unfair. There are charlatans in politics, of course there are. There are charlatans everywhere. There are many people who are in politics for high ideals. There are hacks who got put into parliament by a party machine. There are others who seem to think it’s a lifestyle choice. And there are others who just baffle me. When the Tory MP Julian Critchley first went to Westminster he claimed to have been told by an backbencher: “Young man, it does not do in this party to appear too ambitious. Advancement is solely due to alcoholic stupidity.” I don’t think they’re all complete conmen, I really don’t - that’s very unfair. There are people there who have honourable motives. I just think it shouldn’t be a career for life.

 

Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night is on Thursday May 7th, from 9pm.