Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Photo: Remy Steinegger

While most newspapers columnists, observers, and bloggers saw Piers Morgan’s interview with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday as at best, a piece of public relations puff, and at worst, a debasement of his very office, some beg to differ.

Steve Richards in The Independent today wrote, “Piers Morgan’s interview with Gordon Brown was the most important event in the pre-election campaign so far, with its tears, laughter and selectively frantic dash through a troubled life.” This election, he says, won’t be determined by policy – but by personality.

“Brown has only a few weeks to become a more human public figure and not a one-dimensional speak-your-weight machine going through a tough time,” Richards continued. “The performance was never going to be a game changer, but he needed to clear some ground in order to make any headway at all.”

Even though a transcript of the interview was leaked to the press more than a week ago and the interview aired on Sunday, that hasn’t stemmed the flow of news media analysis of Browns performance, Morgan’s performance, and the state of the political world in general. It’s been remarkably fertile ground.

David Aaronovitch, writing in The Times today, argues that private lives, including that of the Prime Minister, should not become fodder for public consumption. Nowadays, “if you’re a public figure, you try to figure out what belongs to you and what belongs to them. Except that, right now, you can’t. Right now it’s all disclosure, from kids’ education to bathplug prices. With today’s technology, if the hacks don’t get you, the bloggers or the paid whistleblowers will.” In the short-term, this emphasis on public catharsis, shaming, and outing, doesn’t bother us; but in the long-term, it could be damaging. We don’t need to know.

The Guardian also stepped into the fray today; in its editorial on Brown’s evidently historic appearance, the paper went with the general opinion against the interview. “It embodied and marked the latest victory of entertainment over politics. It was personally embarrassing for Mr Brown. It demeaned his office. A prime minister should not have to answer intimate questions from a pipsqueak,” the paper opined.

But will it change things? Not likely, the paper claimed. Still, they add, “If only a handful of voters in every hundred came away from the interview willing to give Mr Brown another hearing, then the interview will have been worthwhile for Labour, even if it did little for the quality and dignity of public life.”