{"id":86118,"date":"2016-03-01T11:09:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T11:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=86118"},"modified":"2016-11-10T15:50:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T15:50:50","slug":"politics-and-the-art-of-deflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/politics-and-the-art-of-deflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics and the art of deflection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>It\u2019s no secret that a major part of a politician\u2019s job description is avoiding questions it may be best not to answer directly. A recent interview between the BBC\u2019s Laura Kuenssberg and Justice Secretary Michael Gove shows a typical rally between journalist and politician with an interesting twist.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pressing Gove on his claims that David Cameron\u2019s recent EU renegotiations aren\u2019t legally binding at an EU level, Kuenssberg faces the age old challenge of trying to get a straight answer out of a politician. Gove is in the position of campaigning against the Prime Minister, who also happens to be his boss, on the EU referendum. Politicians campaigning on an issue usually jump at the chance to label their opponents misleading, but here Gove has the task of being critical without undermining him.<\/p>\n<div class='avia-iframe-wrap'><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1500\" height=\"844\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CKtp3Gs_DCM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>When pressed on whether he disputes the legal status of Cameron\u2019s deal, he replies \u2018\u2019let\u2019s not put words into my mouth\u2019\u2019. Ultimately though, he does dispute it. While he point blank refuses to say the Prime Minister is wrong or has been misleading, by insisting that the \u2018\u2019European Court of Justice is not bound by this agreement\u2019\u2019 he is arguing that the Prime Minister is, well, wrong. And by default, as Kuenssberg points out, he has also been misleading.<\/p>\n<p>Gove knows he\u2019s been called out, but he\u2019s not flustered enough to crumble. Again, this is a key part of any politician\u2019s resume; you must be resolute enough to deflect logical argument, and able to hammer home your point no matter what. When the interview made headlines for all the reasons Gove had tried to avoid, he managed to cover his back because technically, no criticism was made of the Prime Minister himself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Gove?src=hash\">#Gove<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Farage?src=hash\">#Farage<\/a> attempting to sow doubts on legality of EU deal. Seems a bit desperate to me. Undecided voters will see through weak ploy.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Guido Manca (@GuidoManca) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GuidoManca\/status\/702531217099513856\">February 24, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s no secret that a major part of a politician\u2019s job description is avoiding questions it may be best not to answer directly. A recent interview between the BBC\u2019s Laura Kuenssberg and Justice Secretary Michael Gove shows a typical rally between journalist and politician with an interesting twist. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":86122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7271,1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86118"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95633,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86118\/revisions\/95633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}