Chameleon Magazine

We tend to believe that broadcast debate is a form of accountability. When politicians appear on morning television, we assume they are being scrutinised rather than rehabilitated.

This week on Good Morning Britain, two former MPs debated policies they once had the opportunity to shape while serving in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The discussion unfolded in the familiar studio format: moderated exchanges, structured disagreement, and commercial breaks.

On its surface, this looks like democratic engagement. Former office-holders offering insight. Experience informing analysis.

But the arrangement introduces a structural tension. These are not external critics examining decisions from the outside. They are individuals who previously sat within the system now under discussion. When they dissect what “should have been done”, the question lingers: what was done when authority rested with them?

The format rarely pauses on that discontinuity. Instead, debate proceeds as though commentary and responsibility occupy separate categories. The viewer is invited to treat the speakers as analysts rather than as participants in the outcomes being assessed.

This matters because television carries implicit authority. Studio lighting and moderated exchange can flatten distinctions between witness and actor. The transition from legislator to commentator risks reframing policy failure as a topic for discussion rather than a record of decision-making.

There is nothing inherently improper about former politicians entering media. Reinvention is a legitimate part of public life. Experience can deepen debate. Yet when those who exercised power reposition themselves as interrogators of a system they helped operate, the boundary between scrutiny and self-assessment narrows.

Meanwhile, newer voices remain largely peripheral. The debate becomes circular: political experience commenting on political experience. The effect is not overt propaganda, nor explicit absolution. It is subtler. Responsibility becomes diffuse.

The underlying issue is not personality but structure. If media platforms frame former MPs primarily as neutral analysts, accountability risks becoming episodic rather than continuous. Public memory shortens. Context thins.

So when viewers watch former legislators debate policy failures on breakfast television, what exactly are they witnessing: genuine examination of power, or a softer landing for those who once held it?