Mess

This prevarication over interviews is lifting the valance to expose some pretty rotten bedposts.

The Prime Minister will be interviewed on tomorrow's Andrew Marr programme. Statement here. pic.twitter.com/BfICt0hNbT

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) November 30, 2019

The BBC's decision that Boris Johnson should, after all, be interviewed by Andrew Marr because a man with a knife blade duct-taped to his hand went loony at celebration of a marvellous re-habilitation programme, is really uncomfortable. It reveals that the BBC believes it is appropriate to allow our politicians to 'drop in' to current affairs output, to re-assure the nation, outside of what we might have thought were rigorous, independent journalistic criteria.

It's made worse by the fact that the Prime Minister has already moved from straightforward messages of condemnation of the attack and sympathy for the victims (Pienaar to Downing St on Friday), to campaigning exploitation.

Old BBC hands Harding and Mosey are worried. Let's see what happens this morning.