Gordon Brown’s Ask The PM Prime Minister’s Questions-YouTube mashup is all very welcome but could do with a little tweaking…

He’s getting there, but there are some big holes in the ‘initiative’ (I can’t believe he used the word) as it stands.

Why do questions have to be submitted in the form of a video? That might be ‘down’ with the kids but the bastards don’t vote. My gran doesn’t have a video camera. Or the Internet - 39% of the country don’t.

How do we know Labour Party activists aren’t rigging the vote to push favoured questions to the top of the list? it’s called ‘astroturfing‘ and, forgive my cynicism but, it’s not as if New Labour haven’t been guilty of it before. How do we know the difficult/awkward/embarrassing questions aren’t being weeded out?

How do we know soft questions aren’t being planted like we know they are at the real Prime Minister’s Questions? How do we know the Prime Minister isn’t getting prior view of the questions so he can prepare a script? Without the chance for follow-up questions, how do we know this isn’t just a propaganda exercise gussied up as interactive politics?

How do we know it’s even Gordon Brown answering the questions and not GordoBot-1000, a sophisticated computer-generated avatar? I say sophisticated, but there’d be no need to programme GB-1000 to simulate emotion.

5/10. Must try harder.

(As usual, I’ll offer a prize of some sort for anybody actually managing to get a question asked, if they can actually be arsed to engage with this rigmarole. I won’t be pedantic and expect you to have your question actually answered.)