'What could be one of the most dramatic and exiting election nights since the war'

While looking for some examples of the work of the recently deceased BBC journalist John Cole, I stumbled upon this rather extraordinary video of the BBC's 1992 election coverage.

I only made it about five minutes in, but up to that point you have some pretty interesting viewing, from the overly dramatic TV graphics--which seem more 'X-Factor' than 'Serious Politics'--to the broad and diverse selection of posh accents and the effort to invest the results in Basildon with some sense of drama.

My favourite line: David Dimbleby's ringing announcement (at 1:45) that, 'Here in the studio, we've got bank after bank after bank...of computers.'

That was still the kind of thing you mentioned in 1992, apparently. (And I wonder whether your average smart phone today might be able to handle the number crunching that required those 'banks' back then.)

In any case: the BBC's exit polling in 1992 clearly left a lot to be desired.

The Swingometre Stops Here

I do love that headline - it's so 1951:



It was probably concocted by Cameron's spindoctor creative advisor Philip Blond, who also came up with the following lines:

Cameron is crafting a politics of meaning that speaks to something more wanted and more needed than welfarism or speculative enrichment: it is the common project that the state has destroyed - nothing less than the recovery of the society we have lost and the creation of the society that we want.

Qtd. in Jonathan Raban, "Crankish" (Review of Red Tory by Philip Blond), LRB 32.8 (2010), 23

Poetry, pure poetry. And heroic, too. Not since The Fairie Queene has there been such stirring eulogising. The Goliath of the nanny state vs heroic S. David à Cameron: The Redcrosse Friend of the daffodil, the robin and the motorist.

Or is it more: "I am David, Friend of the Motorist!" along the lines of the following: