Gordon Brown hasn’t been the only party leader to blunder during armistice week.
David Cameron last night stood accused of exploiting the war dead for the sake of a set of Armistice Day publicity pictures.
He took his personal snapper into the Garden of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey yesterday to pose for carefully-choreographed photographs. The Tory leader slipped in by a side gate at 10.15am, 30 minutes before dignitaries including the Queen arrived for a First World War commemoration service.
Mr Cameron had clearly been instructed on how to behave and moved briskly from pose to pose, often bending down to read the names on crosses as he was snapped.
Within hours the carefully-vetted pictures were released worldwide.
Ron Watt, chairman of the Suez Veterans’ Association, said: “It seems very much like he’s using this for political gain.”
4 comments:
'The Mirror' Tom? Really? You're better than that.
Separated by only a few pages in that edition of the Mirror there's a photo of Gordon Brown in the same Garden of Rememberence. But that's different of course.
I should probably have hat tipped Mike Smithson, who very graciously read the Mirror so that I didn't have to. That other colossus of serious reportage, the Mail, has also covered it...
(And in Brown's case, supposedly "one nominated TV camera and one Press Association photographer watched from a respectful distance of at least 30ft", rather than having his own personal photographer tail him.)
I know. It's just as attacks go this one is down there with the Sun's behaviour over that letter.
Love the fact the the Mirror's photographer being there to get a photo of the Tory photographer passes by unremarked as well.
But of course: the same standards just don't apply to the media...
For sheer gob-smackingness, the twist of the week has to be the Sun's apology for managing to mis-spell Jacqui Janes's name!
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