Jackie Weaver’s time in office came to an abrupt end last night as the viral star of what should have been an interminably dull meeting of a Cheshire local council meeting was booted out of Channel 4’s political reality show Make Me Prime Minister.
Weaver, who rose to fame on the back of a heated Zoom meeting of Handforth Parish Council in December 2020, had promised ahead of the show that as reality TV PM she would “make decisions people don’t like.”
Unfortunately it transpired that Weaver’s plan to collect local food waste, a service that already existed, as noted by one audience member at her Shropshire hustings against rival fictional PM Adam Kirby, in order to generate electricity was one such decision they didn’t like.
In fact they didn’t like it to the degree of a 28 per cent vote for Weaver, versus former marketing exec Kirby’s 78 per cent for his big idea of creating a new, nationaiised, on-shore wind generating power company.
The show as a whole was an interesting one for reality TV historians – if they’re not a thing yet they will be soon.
Kirby’s own nationalisation idea would perhaps have been much better advocated were he not part of what appeared to be an entirely split team of aspiring politicos who couldn’t agree on a single point of policy.
The departing Weaver, meanwhile, found herself undermined by a ‘press officer’ who refused to allow her to answer a single press question in the shape of another markerter, Natalie India Balmain from London. She also didn’t do herself any favours by suggesting it was fine to make children wear an extra jumper rather than turn the heating on this winter during the ongoing cost-of-living and energy-price crises, in her Q&A with ‘voters.’
Weaver was the first of the show’s temporary PM’s to do the honourable thing and fall on her own sword, tearfully telling her team mates that “I said I would.”
Some might say the real PM has done well to outlast her.
