David Dimbleby rates Boris Johnson’s government as ‘the lowest since I was born’

Veteran UK politics journalist and news presenter David Dimbleby has named the current Conservative government as the worst in his entire lifetime. 

Dimbleby, who is 82 years old, fronted the BBC's coverage of every general election from 1979 to 2017, as well as the Brexit referendum and Question Time. It's safe to say that he has seen his fair share of governments and prime ministers in that time, and he ranks the current crop, led by Boris Johnson as the lowest of the low.

Dimbleby is currently promoting his new podcast called The Fault Line which looks at the build-up to the Iraq War, and spoke to Channel 4 News' Krishnan Guru-Murthy about the current political establishment in the UK.

In the interview, which was aired on Friday, Guru-Murthy asked Dimbleby what his opinion of Johnson and his cohorts is and it doesn't make for pleasant reading if you are the Tories.

Asked: "When you look back at the political generations you have covered, how do you think this one rates?' Dimbleby replied, "Oh low, very, very low. The lowest. The lowest since I was born in 1938, by far."

Dimbleby continued by elaborating on why he thinks so lowly of the government. "It's a combination of things. Incompetence, inexperience, choosing the wrong people to go into the cabinet, all that. It is not a government one would be proud of, I don’t think.”

Guru-Murthy pressed him on his answer, asking why he thinks this has happened to this current political elite. Dimbleby replied:

"I know the current answer which is Brexit and anger in the country and all that, Boris Johnson is a showman, sweeping the country with his 80 majority, I understand all that but why he was chosen? It's difficult isn't it? I think actually, without Covid it would be a different story. I think his style of management, which has clearly been revealed as a way easy going and a lot of allocating, devolving and passing responsibility to other people may work when you are mayor of London and it might have worked when we were leaving the EU and had the focus on the end of the year and the negotiations. But given a serious crisis, I think he wasn't equipped for that."

Needless to say, Dimbleby’s words resonated with some, including Piers Morgan who has been one of the most prominent and outspoken critics of the government during the coronavirus pandemic.

As an aside, Guru-Murthy later wrote in a tweet that Dimbleby was a pleasure to interview as he is as closest thing he has to a broadcasting hero.

Other topics of conversation from the interview included Brexit, the history of Question Time and the future of news broadcasting.  You can watch the full interview here. 

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