[DTV]

Why do you want to see Politics Live axed?

Because, to be blunt, it is a terrible programme with a bad format executed badly. It doesn't fulfil any public service journalism functions and doesn't inform, educate or entertain the general audience. The panel is routinely filled with those on the pundit talking head circuit who hold predictable, deliberately 'controversial' opinions, rather than anybody who has anything actually insightful to say. It is deliberately designed to engineer clips for social media (this isn't cynical supposition, it explicitly says so in the launch press release) and so prioritises 'edgy' mud-slinging debate over considered discussion. The moderation policy also often seems more to about 'getting the clip' than about fact-checking.

It doesn't offer any serious analysis, either from the BBC's own politics team or actual experts. It makes no meaningful attempt to actually engage with questions of policy. There are genuinely serious questions to be asked about the way it presents particular 'think tanks', that are well known within Westminster for being front groups for particular lobbying interests, as 'clean' opinions. Of course, many of these are also complaints against the Daily Politics before and certain other BBC politics output, but Politics Live is probably the greatest distillation of all these faults into a single show, whilst having no redeeming features whatsoever.

The depressing thing is that the same team make Politics UK - a programme that has a real public service function and does it well, so they clearly are capable of producing a much better programme. Personally, I think that the BBC's daily political programme should be offering that level of expert analysis to policy and politics every single day, rather than chasing cheap social media clicks through unedifying and uninformative 'debate'.