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    Joyous moment on Newsnight. And you can't say that too often Archived Message

    Posted by scrabb on February 23, 2019, 12:10 am

    For most of the interview Kirsty had it under control, everything was proceeding according to plan, and then, towards the end, she got the awful sense that her interviewees were going off script. She was interviewing three young women (which makes a welcome change anyway) about the state of politics in the UK. Unpredictable. Unstable. A week of uncertainty and confusion, what with defections from both main parties. Standard Newsnight discussion and debate territory.

    Her guests were a columnist from New Statesman, the representative of a Leavers group, and somebody whose role, unfortunately, I can't remember. But all three were of a mind that the present political model was broken, the populace were attracted to the extremes, and radical steps were required to fix it. Kirsty tried her best to get them to agree that "centrist" policies were the way forward, but she got short shrift. One of them cited Alistair Campbell as being part of the problem, one of the metropolitan elite -- out of touch and yesterday's man (this is my interpretation of her sentiments) and Kirsty was in quick to head that one off at the pass. But worse was to follow. The New Statesman journalist then started talking about the mass of people being overruled by Oxbridge (ie, the media class in their nice little bubble) and at this Kirsty started moving into panic mode, fearing, I suspect, that this young woman was next going to connect Oxbridge to the BBC, the corp being stuffed to the gunnels with em, and that really would be going too far. So once again she dived in to stop that kind of irresponsible talk, yet still the woman repeated the same dreadful slur.

    Fortunately, and to Kirsty's relief, time was running out (doesn't time always seem to run out when interviews are getting interesting?)
    and she brought matters to a close. But it was a joy to witness an interviewer so completely flummoxed by what she expected her guests to say (or parrot) and all three of them, although of different views and persuasions, all agreed that the stultifying status quo had had its chips and real change was needed (including getting shut of those bleeding Oxbridge types running the show). I bet when they invited them on (without a Danny Finklestein or a Polly Toynbee to mouth the usual safe platitudes) the Newnight editorial team were confident that nothing too extreme or too radical would be uttered, and that Kirsty could safely corral them into some comfortable consensus after which we could all drink our cocoa, put the cat out, and retire safely to bed to enjoy a dreamless sleep.

    But boy, did they get a SHOCK. It wasn't seismic, no voices were raised, or windows broken, but it exposed Wark in the cruellest manner possible as being totally out of her depth and indeed one of the detested Oxbridge types herself (or at least a surrogate) who really hasn't a clue which way the wind is blowing and she was left scurrying around to cover up the gaps where the truth was poking through. One thing for certain. Those three won't be invited back on Newsnight as a group or even singly. I bet even now the producer/researcher who booked them will be getting a rocket of ICBM proportions.







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