Shane, it seems, followed the Twitter conventional wisdom. But at least he gave his reasons and said how he thinks Zac should have handled himself.
I beg to differ with much of what Shane says. Yes, Zac did wave his arms about too much. Yes, perhaps he did spend a little too much time calling for Snow to make an apology, but I thought he was a long way from making a fool of himself. Indeed, he was understandably indignant as he felt his integrity was being impugned. I thought Zac was far more convincing than his interlocutor, Jon Snow, who, I thought, emerged from the encounter not only with a large dollop of egg on his face but many questions to answer.
I'm not going to enter the debate about electoral law. Fifteen years ago I knew it like the back of my hand, but not now. But one thing I do know. If you want to petition an election result, you do it through the courts, not through the Electoral Commission.
But the main point of this blogpost is not to debate whether Zac did well or not. It is to point out how rare it is for politicians, or anyone for that matter, to turn the tables on an interviewer. It should happen more often, especially on programmes like Newsnight or Today or Five Live (but clearly not LBC, natch!). The thing politicians need to remember is that most of the time they will know more about the subject than their interviewer. If asked a difficult question, or a stupid question, I often throw it back to the interviewer and ask: "What do you mean by that?" The terror in their eyes is a joy to behold. It's a really good thing to do to smartarse interviewers. I know. Someone did it to me once and my mouth flapped like a goldfish.
The thing is to know how far to go and when to stop. Perhaps Zac went too far in making his initial point, but he was totally within his rights to make it, and Jon Snow didn't do his, or Channel 4 News's credibility any good at all in trying to deal with the allegation that C4 News wouldn't let Zac on the previous evening to defend himself live.
