Politics Weekly

During covid lockdown I stopped watching the Tv news, because it was so depressing. I’ve never gone back to it, because it’s so bitty and superficial, and while my main news source remains reading the paper copy of The Guardian, I’ve increasingly supplemented that with podcasts.

But it matters which podcasts. Friends have recommended The Rest is Politics, with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, but while they’re both knowledgeable and entertaining, I find the pace at which thy skim over topics (“Can’t take the risk of being boring - keep moving!”) frustrating and dissatisfying. I’m much happier with John Harris’ Politics Weekly, which spends its weekly half-hour concentrating on one main topic, with two or three voices being given the time to explore an issue in depth.

That doesn’t mean the result is cheerful. A recent episode, for instance, was a powerful shove in the direction of despair. It looked ahead at 2024, so far as domestic politics was concerned. By the end, I had a clear picture of a dead-end Tory government, postponing the election for as long as it could, and intent upon poisoning the wells of public discourse so as to make life as difficult as possible for its successor. I think that’s probably accurate, but until now I hadn’t grasped how depressing a prospect that will be, and how unlikely it is that anything can avert it.