The Hansard technique

Not everything that is said in the chamber of the House of Commons appears on the Hansard record.  Hansard is meticulous in recording the contributions of every speaker, to the extent of polishing them up, removing the ums and ers and the grammatical inconsistencies and generally making them fit to be read by future generations of scholars. 

However, Hansard does not, broadly speaking, record heckles, catcalls or similar noises off, unless the speaker makes reference to them. Consequently, an experienced speaker who wants to embarrass a heckler will make reference to what has been said “from a sedentary position”.   This ensures that the heckle gets onto the Hansard record and is preserved for posterity.  The same technique is used to record an injudicious shake or nod of the head or other embarrassing, though silent, gesticulation. 

The BBC’s Evan Davis employed the same stratagem in his interview with the Prime Minister on the Today programme yesterday – the day it was officially confirmed that Britain was in recession.  Davis was keen to get the PM to admit that he had made a chump of himself when he had boasted that Labour had abolished boom and bust:

‘”Boom and bust” has been a phrase much associated with you; you’re hanging your head even as I say the words.’

Brown immediately denied hanging his head.  Well done, Evan, I thought.  You’ve got him. You’ve made him look a plonker.

Unfortunately, however, Davis didn’t leave it there.  He was so desperate to get Gordon to fess up to his hubris, and thereby get a scoop that would be repeated on news bulletins thought the day,  that he persisted in dementedly squawking: “Boom and bust, boom and bust, admit it, that’s what we’ve had, we’ve had boom and bust, boom and bust on your watch.”

Brown, in response, refused (predictably enough) to give Davis his scalp.  He kept stonewalling the accusation, like a lugubrious Scottish Geoffrey Boycott hunkering down for a mammoth spell at the crease.  The word “global” was deployed to mind-numbing effect.

Davis should have left it with the single use of the Hansard technique.  Notwithstanding Brown’s denial, the image indelibly formed in the minds of the great British listening public would have been of the Prime Minister dejectedly hanging his great, shaggy head in shame at the terrible folly of his own punctured, overweening pride.