Fashionably late poster comment

OK, so admittedly I'm fashionably late to the party in passing a comment on the poster the Labour Party chose as winner for its online competition, but Im going to do it anyway. Lets be blunt, what in the name of all that is Holy (for it is Easter) were they thinking?

Actually forget that. I know exactly what they were thinking. They look at the character of Gene Hunt - in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes - and see all the things he does wrong, like mild police brutality, rampant sexism and excessive individualism and think, bizarrely, that when people see him in the fictional dramas they dislike him because of these things.

The problem is, natch, that people dont dislike these things about Gene Hunt at all. That he, for want of a better phrase, calls a spade a spade, and gets the job done even if it does require a little coercion that doesn't fit in with the year 2010 is accepted as a necessary evil.

Gene Hunt is cool and he drives one of the greatest cars of said decade.

Putting the complete failure of criticial understanding about the popularity of Gene Hunt though, why on earth did Labour assume everyone would recognise the image anyway? Yes it's a popular show, but it's not that popular.

The most likely impact of the poster being talked about on TV and blogs is that the viewing figures will go up and more people will watch and say "that Gene Hunt geezer is cool".

Anyhow, perhaps Labour should look on the brightside. Back in February 2009 Gordon Brown cocked up at a UK-China ceremony by flying the Union flag upside down and it seems one of the other poster entries that was also in the running for Labour to use made the same mistake again (pictured above).