February 8, 2024 - 6:00pm
Stop the press — a new political podcast is in town. Electoral Dysfunction, the new venture by Sky News’s Beth Rigby, Scottish Conservative Ruth Davidson and Labour’s Jess Phillips, promises “three political powerhouses” to “unravel the spin” in a bumper year of elections. If you’re having your Brenda from Bristol moment, you’re not alone.
Launching a podcast has now become something of a compulsory pastime for many politicians and spin doctors. It doesn’t matter how embarrassing your political missteps, or how immoral your previous decisions, the podcast studio is where failed careers come to be rehabilitated.
Consider The Rest is Politics, perhaps the most successful show of its type, where Labour attack dog Alastair Campbell and former Conservative Rory Stewart promise to “lift the lid on the secrets of Westminster”. Like the Electoral Dysfunction gals, Stewart and Campbell believe that the thing people really hate about political discourse is all the nasty disagreement.
The podcast claims to bring back “the lost art of disagreeing agreeably”, which, for anyone who has had the pleasure of being on a TV sofa with Campbell, is a laughable suggestion. By boiling everything down to a sort of centrist conformity — from discussions about immigration or Brexit to gender ideology, environmentalism or the war in the Middle East — the overriding message is that what people really want is sensible, intellectual, after-dinner-style political analysis.
Electoral Dysfunction’s cosy collaboration across party lines is nothing new. There’s Ed Balls and George Osborne’s Political Currency, Iain Dale and Jacqui Smith’s For The Many and — most bizarrely — professional feminist Deborah Frances-White and phone-flinging John Bercow’s podcast Absolute Power.
While many of these shows offer up a level of insider gossip into the world of Westminster — popular background music for a middle-class Sunday morning — what they really reveal is how easy it really is to “reach across” party lines. The gap between the Conservatives and Labour is no longer wide enough to fit a cigarette paper. While most people think the “never kissed a Tory”-style political division is a bit silly, the chumminess of our political elite on display in the podcasting world is enough to make one reach for the sick bucket.
In her explanation for launching the podcast, Rigby says that, despite this being the “most seismic UK election in a generation”, voters simply “aren’t feeling it”, and that people tell her that “politics isn’t working.” As Davidson says, the cure for such political apathy isn’t better politics, or bigger ideas, but simply to explain a little better to the voting public exactly what politicians get up to. “This whole podcast is about showing what goes on behind the scenes, explaining how decisions get made,” Davidson told Sky. “It’s a three-woman campaign for less BS in SW1.” The problem with politics isn’t them, you see, it’s us — the listeners who simply just don’t get how it all works.
The expansion of parliamentary podcasting is telling — particularly when many politicians now refuse to take part in hustings or face-to-face surgeries. The padded rooms of a studio are far more inviting than a draughty town hall, and the pesky members of the public can only reply to you in the comments. Political speeches are made not for the court of public opinion, but for clipability on social media.
The rise of political podcasting is not an entry point into politics for the dispossessed, but instead an expression of how insular and introspective politics has become. These shows aren’t about politics at all: they’re about politicians. “It’s a total sausage-fest out there,” Davidson says, suggesting that Electoral Dysfunction (get it) offers “something different”. Give me strength.
Ella Whelan is a freelance journalist, commentator and author of What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism.
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SubscribeFirst the leftist grifters, and then the rightist grifters, the boy grifters, the girl grifters, the centrist dad grifters, the centrist mum grifters (who aren’t even mums or dads many of them), boomer grifters, zoomer grifters, grifters, grifters, grifters. Grifters, all.
I’m haunted by grifters, like that psychedelic army of pink elephants on parade from Dumbo:
https://youtu.be/jcZUPDMXzJ8?si=bDtGrMPDcvd88jgQ
Somebody, save me from the grifters, pl-eeze.
Will nobody rid me of these turbulent centrists?
Extremism in defense of centrism is no vice.
The nice thing is the marketplace will decide if the podcast is worth the effort.
Are you sure? It may depend on who is funding it. Consider if you will that miserable communist rag The Morning Star – still publishing after all these years and probably of interest only to a handful of depressing old Marxists.
If depressing old Marxists want to squander their money funding a paper nobody reads, I say let ’em.
I don’t have an issue with that. It’s a wasted effort if you have no reach – other than a lazy job creation pgm.
I’m talking about a skewed marketplace and the illusion of established popularity.
Consider if you like a more outrageous example: the BBC – not willingly funded by a grateful public but coercively funded by a legally enforceable license fee. And it certainly looks like a lazy job creation programme.
I’m sure Beth Rigby et al appreciated this article. Well, it’s all free publicity.
Edit: Hang-on one of the presenters is Jess Phillips. I think she is the MP who feigned laughter and kackled during a select committee hearing when an interviewee before the committee suggested that the high rate of male suicide in the UK should be of interest.
I’m surprised that Ruth Davidson, who is sometimes quite insightful, is teaming up with these intellectual featherweights.
Having been near Jess in a theatre for a recording of Matt Forde’s ‘The Political Party’ I can confirm she was rude and obnoxious to those around her (making people move so that she could “go vote” quickly in the middle of the recording) and then talked throughout and left as soon as her ‘part’ was over.
What’s a podcast? (Oh, the joy of being old and utterly out of touch!).
You’re really out of touch JB. Even I’m on board – and I’m two feet from the grave.
I should have added a smiley face to show I was joking when I said I didn’t know what a podcast is.
It’s basically an online radio show. It’s kind of like hearing voices, except you can turn it off and stop listening to it.
Perhaps not a good idea to be too hard on “chummy centrist podcasts.” Arguably, Unherd’s own “These Times” podcast falls into that category (and a fine podcast it is).
If they all go and away and congregate, or perhaps congeal, in a single place, maybe it will make it easier to ignore them.
Well they certainly give the impression of being quite gelatinous – oozing thick viscous corrosive fluid all over the place just as they prepare to rip your face off. Congealing in a single place is a good idea, but you’d want to be wary of approaching any lightly-humming pod(cast)s on the planet they end up on.
At last, living proof that you can be anything as long as you’re a centrist!
And, contrary to what a DWEM wrote, the centrist can indeed hold. The best lack all differentiation, while the worst are full of passionate mediocrity.
The Three Fates, one sister spins the thread of public understanding, the second sister measures out a moderate length, and the third cuts it off before it reaches an extreme. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
Surely some revelation is at hand! Some second coming! The Tory carrion crows take to the lowering skies, shrieking alarm, as somewhere on the blasted heath of public opinion, the Blairite beast slouches towards the ballot box to be born again.
Scottish “Conservative” Ruth Davidson.
There, fixed it for you.
The problem with all these ‘disagreeing agreeably’ podcasts is that they don’t actually disagree. Bring back Diane Abbott and Portillo on This Week.
Diane went… a bit off the chart though.
My immediate thought was this reminds me of the three GORGONS: Stheno, Euryale, and MEDUSA.
Sadly only the last was mortal.
Personally I like these kind of podcasts. They are a reminder to me that not everyone is up in arms and constantly angry about anything and everything, and the world isn’t as shouty as social media makes out. Then again, I’m quite centrist by nature so I’m their market.