The advice that John Ryley, the head of Sky News, gives to his presenters before a big interview is “prepare, prepare, prepare”.
And so it was for the channel’s political editor, Faisal Islam, in the run-up to his big chance to question David Cameron and Michael Gove, in the first major programmes devoted to the subject before June’s EU referendum.
Broadcasters are generally offered one or two questions when interviewing the prime minister, stretching to three or four minutes on a foreign trip, if they are lucky.
Here was an opportunity to fire questions at Cameron for more than 20 minutes on a high-stakes referendum. Esme Wren, the head of politics for Sky News, knew it was a rare opportunity for her 24-hour news channel, which was why she felt everyone had to be “totally focused”.
She stopped Islam being drawn into any other work, including switching to another reporter for a foreign trip with Cameron to the G7 in Japan. And then it was heads down. Wren, her political editor and two researchers, including a star producer for Sky, dedicated more than a week – including full days at Islam’s house – going through everything Cameron and Gove had said on all relevant subjects.
The key would be to hit their weak spots by highlighting the areas in which they had failed to provide a convincing argument: on immigration for Cameron (“you can’t have freedom and control,” said Wren) and the economy for Gove, who has to respond to the dire predictions of the Treasury, IMF and so on.
The team tried to guess the politician’s answers to all questions and then slowly removed those that would be easily responded to, before narrowing down their focus to just a handful of policy areas. Then they had rehearsals with stand-ins for Cameron and Gove in order to practise, practise, practise.
The questions from the audience, chaired by Kay Burley, were just as spiky, with considerable effort discernible on the part of the producers in choosing characters who would make life uncomfortable for the prime minister. Accusations of scaremongering but – perhaps worse – of “waffling” genuinely threw him.
What was not planned, however, was the audience heckling with questions off microphone. They had been asked not to but clearly an audience that is ready to give a politician a kicking just cannot hold back.
