Nick Ferrari (Global) | lbc.co.uk
The News Agents (Global) | globalplayer.com
The Rest Is Politics (Goalhanger Podcasts) | apple.com
Oh God, What Now? (Podmasters) | apple.com
Electoral Dysfunction (Sky News) | podcasts.apple.com
The Turnout with GK Barry (Bauer Media) | open.spotify.com
Just under two weeks to the general election, so this week I dipped into political shows to help get you in the mood/decide which way to vote/make you shout, “I can’t take much more of this!” On Tuesday, wily LBC breakfast veteran Nick Ferrari had Keir Starmer in the studio, taking phone-in questions from listeners, with Rishi Sunak doing the same on Wednesday. These phone-ins are a familiar Ferrari feature: in the past he’s done regular Call Clegg and Ask Boris listener-question slots, and, most recently, Call Keir, a monthly show with the opposition leader.
Given that Starmer has done this before, you’d expect him to take listener questions in his stride, and he did well, if you interpret “well” as meaning he didn’t suddenly start frothing “eat the rich!”. He straight-batted some tricky questions, including what would happen to children with special educational needs at private schools if Labour charged their parents VAT, whether he would have served as a cabinet member if Corbyn had been PM and how he would balance the rights of women with trans rights. He explained more than once that Labour had made some difficult decisions (eg not lifting the two-child benefit cap) to ensure that all their proposals are funded. He sounded, if not tough, then headteacherly and serious, though that didn’t stop the rightwing papers scouring the interview for anti-Labour clickbait.
The line they went with came from Ferrari asking Starmer to define “working people”, because Labour has pledged not to raise taxes on working people. Pressed by Ferrari, he gave a definition: “People who earn their living, rely on public services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble.” Completely uncontroversial, you’d think, but spun within minutes to mean that Labour would definitely tax people who have savings. Ugh.
On Wednesday, Sunak was allowed to set out his pitch before the callers came on – essentially that the Tories would be “cutting people’s taxes at every stage of their life” – and was then lobbed soft balls such as the 17-year-old who asked about national service and then said she quite liked the idea. Gradually, though, things got rougher: some callers were cross, noticeably a man who’s lived with HIV for many years, who called Sunak a “pound shop Farage”, and a young woman who said everything about her future felt uncertain, and responded to Sunak’s blether about housing with, “Frankly, I think you’re lying through your teeth.”
LBC boasts a strong roster of political presenters, both on radio (James O’Brien, Iain Dale) and on their podcasts. Of the pods, The News Agents is always pretty good – especially when they get out to do some proper reporting – though Maitlis, Sopel and Goodall all have such strong main character energy that the three of them together can be overbearing. They nail everything a bit too high, make the same point over and over. The recent show about Bristol and the Green party’s challenge on Labour was very good, but you could have lost about 20 minutes and had the same impact.
Outside LBC, The Rest Is Politics is the big hitter, though a stronger production hand would be good here too, for a different reason. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart can be too casual and cosy with each other (in contrast to The News Agents’ constant overstatement), and Stewart’s waffly manner detracts from whatever they’ve decided to discuss. And I’ve never quite gelled with Political Currency, with Ed Balls and George Osborne, mostly because I can’t think of Osborne as a nice guy. For smaller egos and more intelligent discussion, the Oh God, What Now? crew are easier to live with (for transparency, I host a podcast that’s made by the same company). The panel is made up of lefty journos, so there’s much enjoyable “the politicians said what?” nonsense-unpicking. Though even with such delightful companions as Marie Le Conte, Rafael Behr and Ava Santina, an hour is too long for me.
My favourite of all the overtly political podcasts is Electoral Dysfunction, usually hosted by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, the Tory peer Ruth Davidson and Labour’s Jess Phillips. But Phillips is out on the campaign trail, so each week she’s been suggesting someone to take her place. A jolly and insightful Margaret Hodge was the substitute a few days ago, on an episode that was recorded soon after Rigby had grilled Starmer and Sunak live on Sky. She explained her thinking behind the interviews and just how hard she and her team had worked, prepping for ages and doing practise interviews every day for the week before the real thing. Plus: her tooth filling fell out just before she went on air!
The BBC, on its Sounds app, has what looks like a new station, Election 2024, nestling in between 5 Live Sports Extra and 6 Music. It’s actually a compilation station of the BBC political offer: so Radio 4’s Today runs live from 6-9am, then there’s a flip to 5 Live Nicky Campbell’s phone-in show, and another at lunchtime to an audio feed from Politics Live, the TV programme. Other strands are Any Questions?, Any Answers?, PM and the Six O’Clock News. In between, we get “coverage from BBC news”, which is a bit hit and miss. One for the real political junkies.
My favourite new find is very different from all of these. The Turnout With GK Barry is a new and hugely enjoyable show, in which the 24-year-old social media star tries to encourage people of her generation to vote. In her first episode, Barry met a few non-voting young people, who said they were confused about politics and didn’t feel informed. To help, she also interviews some political types, including Nish Kumar and Alastair Campbell. In both cases the cheeky and witty Barry slightly threw them by chiming in with one-word comments and little quips whenever they delivered a long speech. “I see what you’re doing,” said Campbell, but Barry was so disarming that even he couldn’t stay pompous for long. Great stuff.
