 So the last couple of days you've published a few articles, you've made a few tweets, you've ruffled a few feathers. Have I? Yeah, you have. I've noticed. One line in particular stood out for me, you said that much of the UK media looks like a cult. Can you unwrap that a little bit? What do you mean? Okay, so what I said in the tweet, if I've got it here, just so I get it right, is afflicted by a suffocated group, I think. Intolerant of critics, hounds and turtle dissenters, full of people who made it because of connections and all personal background rather than merit. And what the British media then did with a full-blown pylon was disprove comprehensively that they are not intolerant of critics and they do not hound internal dissenters. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is about it. I kind of have lost patience a little bit, to be honest with you. I mean, media bias the structural problems with the media, which is one of the most socially exclusive industries in Britain. I've written about it, you know, my first book was pretty much about that. You know, it was about how the media demonised working-class communities in the arch-part. I was a prop for a very unequal system that rationalised inequality as something which was to do with, you know, anyone can make it if they try hard and the people at the bottom are there because they're thick and stupid and that was a way of, you know, demonisation as that backbone of an equal society. And then I wrote another book called The Establishment which has a whole chapter called Mediocracy which is again about the structural problems with the British media. And the reason I'm just, I think fed up is partly is that it's not just which will come on to you, which is just, you know, what a closed chop for the privilege that the media is for lots of reasons which I'm sure we'll chat about. You know, in the kind of pre-2015 era, I was in a very isolated position without getting a little violin out as, you know, one of the only left wingers with a public platform. And, you know, and I was genuinely treated by my so-called peers as, you know, basically a crank who was completely divorced from political reality. And after the 2015 election in particular, that was, you know, I remember Dan Hodges, quite like Dan, in a weird way, but he was like the one thing that the next Labour leader can learn from is never listen to Owen Jones, or do the opposite of whatever Owen Jones says and everything. And obviously we've changed that in the sense, you know, we do have some, you know, left wingers and so on, but with very marginal platforms. And there was a complete difference between political reality in Britain where the left, as me and you understand it, is at its strongest position in the history of this country, and immediately, which actually now is increasingly just doubling, you know, going back to basically this idea of the left is this cult, I mean, you know, and also this, you know, completely marginal or relevant kind of thing. But for me, it is that, you know, it's the suffocating group thing. It's the absolute intolerance of any criticism or critique. And it is the fact it is a closed shop for the privilege. And I suppose what I'd just say to those people is, blimey, you can deal it out, can't you, but you certainly can't take it. You know, these people, many of them, who continue, you know, they have no intellectual political, they don't have the courtesy of extending political curiosity to the left. It is just a cult. And that's it. You know, these are just delusional... Got the Genanganesh tweet, right? That was emblematic of that. Genanganesh, the format, you know, sorry, he's still at the Financial Times. You know, he said, you know, people tried to analyse the Corbyn movement, believe me, I tried, and the fact is they're just thick as pig shit. Now, that was quite, you know, a vulgar way of putting what, a lot of journalists, you know, the media elite certainly feeling, felt in privately, but still feel. And that expresses itself in their analysis. So, there's that. But also, I mean, many of the people who piled in will have, you know, their careers have included demonising immigrants, Muslims, refugees, benefit claimants, with genuine life, you know, consequences for people, hate crimes on the streets, whether it be towards, you know, disabled people, a coalition of charities a few years ago said, abuse towards disabled people had surged because of this narrative of scroungers pushed by the media elite, or immigrants, you know, the surgeon hate crimes we saw particularly after the Brexit result. So, all I would say is, you know, my view in terms of, yes, this is a very socially and politically exclusive institution which defends its borders, its boundaries, it's, you know, in a very zealous fashion, to say the least. And it does strike me as somebody who's worked in the media for seven years that it is a racket, I'm afraid. It's not, you know, the media, unless you're a social Darwinian who believes that people, you know, that the most privileged people in society are the best and the brightest, then, you know, quite clearly the media is completely unrepresentative of British society, both in terms of being socially exclusive but also politically exclusive. And, you know, the cult-like way people have responded to that. You know, an intelligent way would have gone, it's not like the language they said, but this, you know, lefty little gob shark which is generally how most of them see me or whatever. But it's got a point, isn't it? I mean, look at the figures. Jesus Christ. You know, we need to, you know, we need to, I think, an intelligent response given... A few people have said that right, but a tiny minority. A tiny minority, yeah. I mean, privately, many have, but they're scared of speaking out, which again, did you see my point? Actually, privately some journalists have gone. One did, Lewis Goodall, he's a sky political correspondent, and he said there is group think, and he's himself, he said he's been susceptible to it. And that sort of honesty is important. I mean, it's extremely important, in terms of being self-critical. But the vast majority don't want to do that. There's been a very defensive reaction. I mean, if we just look at the social-exclusive side of things, I mean, study after study by the Sutton Trust, by the Social Mobility Commission, set up by the government, led by Alan Milburn, a former New Labour minister, you know, it went into detail about the media, all of those studies, and it shows that all about 50, well over half of the top 100 journalists are privately educated, only 7% go to a private school. Only 19% are comp-educated in a society where 90%, not 19, 90% go to a comprehensive school. And that journalists are, the journalism is second only to medicine in terms of people coming in from, you know, with middle-class parental backgrounds. And again, you know, let me apply my own critique to myself. You know, I might have gone to a Northern Comprehensive, but, you know, my dad was a white-collar local authority worker. My mum was a university lecturer at Salford University. And the background I have was more privileged than every single person that I was friends with growing up, without exception. So, you know, even the people who went to comprehensive schools who are now on my feed, oh, honestly, I know every single person who went to a comprehensive school in the media now, I've got their entire live stories on my Twitter feed. You know, again, overwhelmingly are still from these very narrow social backgrounds. Now, you know, that is one reason you have groupthink. If you have people who are drawn overwhelmingly from a relatively very small sliver of British society, you know, we all have prejudices and preconceptions and views of the world which are shaped by our background experiences. If you get lots of people from similar backgrounds in the same institution, all of those things will reinforce themselves. How you see the world, your priorities. You know, you know, social housing might not be top of your list. If you didn't, you know, you didn't grow up in a family which was languishing on a social housing waiting list. And I think, you know, that's one problem with, you know, the kind of groupthink. Just in terms of the reaction, though, because I think it's worth, I don't know, we'll talk, I'm sure, about why it's socially exclusive. But the reason so many of them have got so angry is partly the age-old phenomenon of anyone with privilege having that privilege critiqued, taking it exceptionally personally, because everybody wants to feel that all of their achievements are theirs alone. And the idea of suggesting, well, actually, you've had odds stacked in your favour from day one, and again, I'll apply that to myself. If I'd grown up on, you know, a council estate around the corner, if I'd been on the, you know, Angela Rayner, who is an exception, she grew up literally the road next to mine in Stockport. She is an exception in politics, she's somebody from, you know, left school at 16, working-class single-mom and so on. But, you know, statistically, the idea I'd be sitting in this chair talking to you as a guardian columnist and an author or whatever, as somebody who'd grown up around the corner for myself and a council estate is for the birds. Just every statistic shows that. But many people take that personally. I am the best, I am brightest. That's why I've made it here. It's not true. All of us have to accept that in these privileged positions. Well, what's changed? Because you said right at the outset that you were fed up, you'd had enough. So you've been in journalism, like you say, seven years. Are you fed up because you've been in there for seven years and you're seeing the same thing? Or has something significantly changed after 2015 and then, of course, after the last general election? I think the fact that, I think that the stubbornness, you know, the lack of willingness to adapt or understand a political situation, which, you know, the gap between media culture and how the media looks at the world and analyzes the world and the political context of this country has surely never been wider. Ever. I mean, surely not. Surely not. In certainly, you know, I mean, I don't know. Certainly in the last generation, let's... I mean, it feels that way, but maybe we're younger, maybe we're missing out on something, but it feels precisely like you said. In the last generation, certainly, let's just avoid that. You know, avoid anyone nitpicking over that. It's like from the 1890s. Yeah, exactly. Well, exactly. There we go. In the last generation, let's be as precise as possible. And I think what we've seen in the last few weeks is certainly an attempt to not just turn the clock back on the general election result, but also to actually go further than that and delegitimize the left as a political force, as unacceptable, as morally disgraceful. And this idea was returned again, because many journalists responded to me, senior journalists, by going, oh, you call this a call? Oh, look at the left. Well, again, that's kind of the point there, because they still have this, you know, even after the left-led Labour Party won 40% of the electorate, won the third-highest share of the vote. I know Labour didn't win. Third-highest share of the vote in, you know, polarisation meant Labour didn't win, but third-highest share of the vote since the early 1970s. And you still have a situation where the left now is just treated as an irrational, delusional, dangerous, potentially cult of people. And that lack of willingness to understand it is infuriating, and it has to be changed. And, you know, this attempt to constantly, you know, again, when I've talked about this, you know, some of them are like, you know, Owen Jones having a public meltdown, nervous breakdown, you know, use of mental... Why do they say that? Because, like you say, this is your entire professional career has been based on talking about these things. So why are they saying that you're having a breakdown? I think... What's your explanation for that? What's my explanation now? I think it's an age-old... The age-old way of approaching people on the left who are unapologetic and strident about their political opinions is that they are unhinged cranks. And we've always... It's applied to any senior left-wing figure or any left-wing figure, sorry, with any significant platform. And it is a way of policing the acceptable boundaries of political debate that, you know, that there is an ex... You know, that there is the grown-up, sensible, sane view of the world, which is very grown-up and look, you know, people in the professions and, you know, people within the commentary and all the rest of it, they're all colleagues and we all have to be collegiate and all the rest of it, and partly have the same worldview, the same suffocating group, I think. And anybody who deviates from that is seen as, you know, completely delusional or basically unhinged mentally. And, you know, I think using mental health stigma at full stop is obviously gross, but it is just an attempt, again, to police those boundaries. It's a commentary that wants to reassert old certainties in politics which do not exist in this country anymore. But hasn't it gone past all that? Momentum have got 40,000 members, like you say, Labour have just got 40% of the vote. Surely it's too late for all this. Because it seems almost like, more than denial, it seems almost like despair because the response to has just been, like you say, so monumentally bizarre for me. Yeah, again, it's an attempt, I think, to return to a comfort zone of analysis, of political analysis, which is, you know, in the old comfort zone, you know, one of the central pillars of your understanding, you know, in the media, in political journalism, of the world around you, is a mythical idea of the so-called centre ground which if Labour departs in any serious fashion, will lead to electoral annihilation. And anybody who thinks otherwise is completely and utterly delusional and at war with political facts. And the way that media commentators are used to, you know, policing that analysis is to treat anybody who deviates as children, you know, is infantile, we're the grown-ups, we're serious, get with the real world, you know? If you want to make changes in the world, you're going to have to make some serious compromises. Even as there are, you know, centrist politics across the entire western world is in a state of abject collapse where, you know, all the social democratic parties led by those subscribing to the so-called third way, you know, are facing extinction in many countries. But nonetheless, they're still like, you know, this is our grown-up way. And it's like they've got this way-back mission. They're trying to find a way back to how things were when things made sense. And what we have seen that over the last few weeks in particular, you know, labor, pawns of foreign powers, and all the rest, the way, to be honest, quite authoritarian societies deal with political opponents. Do you think that's the direction we're moving in now? Absolutely. The total delegitimisation of the left, pawns of foreign powers, allied to terrorist organisations would be totalitarians. Neo-fascists, as, you know, one cabinet minister described, Sajidavi described momentum, it's sinister, it's dangerous, that the left is not wrong, it's morally disgraceful, and, you know, and not a legitimate part of British politics. So let's say that the left overcomes that, surmounts all these issues because it was relatively unimportant in the last general election. Secures the majority somehow at the next general election, let's say 20 or 30, even a minority government with the SNP. How does that play out? Because clearly this is not going away. This tendency now within the media delegitimised to just really immerse itself in slander and defamation 24-7. How do you envisage that playing out under a Labour government? Well, firstly, I genuinely do worry, by the way, that some of the discourse and some of the rhetoric even before Labour going to government is radicalising people. We've already had an attempted, well, we had a terrorist attack in London where a man plowed his van into a mosque and it was revealed that he'd gone to London with the intention of killing Jeremy Corbyn on the basis he was a terrorist sympathiser and also said he can't on the basis he was a terrorist sympathiser. He said that would be, I don't know, a bonus or something. And, you know, in that trial it was revealed that he was partly radicalised by the media. And if you constantly tell the public that the opposition are basically traitors who are, you know, in league with hostile foreign powers, you know, I went door knocking yesterday and I did have somebody, a character who was ranting about Labour being in league with Putin and Russia and how Jeremy Corbyn should be shot. That's what he said. Can you think that's direct outgrowth of the media that you're criticising? Of course it is. Of course it is. The media in this country, you know, and it's why it's so important to critique the media because the media regard themselves as the guardians, you know, the, you know, those who guard the boundaries of acceptable political debate who choose the priorities of the nation, they're losing that power. Partly why they're so kind of the hysteria, by the way, because they feel very insecure. They're challenged by new media outlets like yourself. They're challenged by, you know, by other people with platforms. They are facing increasing critique. Social media means they can be constantly scrutinised in a way they don't like. Not just, you know, they will conflate criticism, passionate criticism with abuse, in debate, but that's what they do. And that, as part of it, is kind of, you know, an institution which is in decline objectively. But in government, I mean, it will be off the scale hysteria, which is basically a, you know, this, you know, that Britain is no longer ruled by legitimate government, that it is a government of extremists, pawns of hostile foreign powers. The enemy within has taken over the citadel of power, and they will throw everything, everything out that government to destabilise it and to bring it down. So you think there would almost be a sort of suspension of the media as one we would associate with democracy, who are labour to come into power? Of course. I mean, you already, I mean, we're already, to a degree, we've already gone quite a long way down that road. And I worry sometimes that we're numb to some of the language and discourse which is used. You know, look, just myself, I'm one of the only people in the British commentary at, in terms of a hired columnist who is not overtly hostile, you know, let alone sympathetic to the politics of a Labour Party which won 40% of the vote. So, you know, it will be just every single day, every single front page will just be this constant war of attrition to delegitimize a government and treat it as fundamentally illegitimate and an attempt to whip up public hysteria over every single thing that it does. But we're already seeing that. I mean, the question is, of course, how much influence will that have because we saw very clearly the limits of what that does at the last election. The caution I would put there, though, of course, is during the general election campaign, broadcasting impartiality rules have to come into play so the leader of the opposition gets unfiltered, direct, kind of, reached to the audience and also you get viral social media and that's harder when Labour's in government. Do you think that the BBC could be a counterweight, however, to private interest in print media, potentially? Well, look, we've just had a study revealed by the BBC which, until the 1990s, they prevented leftists from getting jobs at the BBC by cooperating with the security services. Many of those people are still there. In fact, Chris Dillow, who's a brilliant, a very interesting, I think, blogger and writer, he wrote about this, about how the fact that many of those people who came in under that regime are there and are now in senior positions and have appointed people who are in junior positions. So even though, of course, that filtering system with the security services, as far as we know, has, well, probably it has gone because Paul Mason managed to creep through at one point, but nonetheless, you know, overwhelmingly it's stuff full of people who did come under that regime, who were often in senior positions and they've appointed people in other positions, so you can see how it replicates itself. But the BBC, what it does is, so we have a press in this country which is overwhelmingly editorially supportive of the Conservative Party. In an aggressive partisan way, we have one of the most aggressive press print leaders in the entire Western world. And the BBC, every day, it frames its discussions around the front pages of those newspapers. So that's how you end up with a situation where the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Times, the Press and all the rest, you know, to a large degree dictate, broadcasting priorities every single day. Which they're amplified by, I suppose, you could say. Of course, and you end up with a positive feedback loop as well. And obviously, they inevitably ask the benefit of a Conservative Party, which overwhelmingly has the press on its side, which then means Labour's constantly put in a defensive posture. And, you know, even when you get, you know, attacks or criticisms on the Conservative Party, they're very different from... as a consequence to the Labour Party. You know, I'm not saying the press never criticizes the Conservative Party, that's not true. They're often it's from the right. But, you know, it's nowhere near the intensity, inevitably, in the same way if we lived in a country where nearly every single newspaper backed the Conservative Party, I'm sure you would still have critiques of the Labour Party, but they would not be, you know, they would not be anywhere near the intensity and the framing of the broadcast media would be weighted overwhelmingly towards us. But I think, I mean, you know, it's difficult because, I mean, the reasons we have these problems in terms of the press generally is it's obviously the fact the press is overwhelmingly run by oligarchs who are part of a status quo that's in their material interest to defend. And, you know, who, you know, it's also actually with journalists because of the decline of the media and the, you know, the funding model is in a state of total collapse. That makes journalists even more insecure, doesn't it? The journalists are constantly terrified of their career if they rock the boat in any way that out and they have no future. So that ties into the editorial position. Equally, if you have, you know, work in a newspaper, which the odds are you will, which has a Conservative bent, even if you're not a Conservative, if you want to rise, you're going to have to bend yourself to the editorial worldview of that newspaper. Equally, of course, you have the collapse of local newspapers which allowed working class aspiring journalists off in a reading. You've got the proliferation of unpaid internships, which do two things. Firstly, they discriminate in favour of the privileged. Those who can live off the bank of Mum and Dad. They live in London, one of the most expensive cities on Earth, and what, and work for free. For months, often, with no promise of a job at the end of it, you know, it's impossible for those people. The other thing it does is often those interns are relatives or friends of people who work at those newspapers. So, you know, and I've had examples, someone got in touch with me, he applied for an internship at The Times in 2003 and the letter back said, I'm afraid we only, the only people who do internships are relatives of people who work here. And he said they probably won't put that in print anymore, but that still happens, and he knows that anecdotally, this journalist. So, you have that problem. You have the rise of expensive postgraduate journalism qualifications, which, again, are exorbitantly expensive for most people. It's a filter, really, isn't it, to get... It's a massive filter. You've got as many filters as possible as stop working class people getting into a profession. Exactly, and it makes it socially exclusive. It's just, exactly, it's a complete... For the vast majority of people, that's impossible. The statistics are so clear that it's so... And actually, much of the evidence suggests it's become more socially exclusive since the 1980s, which isn't the case with some other institutions, incidentally. So, you've got that problem, and also, for the reasons I've described, it's politically exclusive. There's a very strong and suffocating worldview, which, if you deviate from, you are going to suffer career-wise, or there's a big chance you will. Different standards will be applied to you. So, even if you deviate slightly, you can probably still rise to a degree, but your expectations will be a lot higher. The standards you have for me will be much higher. If you deviate significantly, you're treated as a crank, as even mentally ill. You're pathologised, but you... So, it is, I'm afraid... And it's not, I'm saying, I'm not saying those who rise to the top have to be conservatives. Actually, I bet most journalists maybe don't vote for the conservatives. It's a centrist worldview. It's an orthodoxy, which is economically liberal, or neoliberal or whatever, or certainly thinks that you can't deviate from a so-called centre ground of what you do with the economy, like increasing taxes on the rich or public ownership, and social liberalism. That has a limit, because much of the press is vociferously anti-immigration, but a lot of people writing those pieces don't believe what they're writing. Stig Abel, great example, right? Former editor at The Sun. But also, I suppose, Richard Peppier, who works at The Daily Star, and he was a whistleblower, he resigned a few years ago, because he was... He was writing... He was forced, well, he was told to write a copy which was lies about Muslims and demonised Muslims, one of the most demonised communities in this country, which faces hate crimes as a consequence of that media bile directed against them. He didn't believe a single word he was writing, as he said, and he was very courageous and he resigned. But in any case, you know, that's in the BBC, the centre of gravity is economic and social liberalism, which is why you get people on the right often. I mean, part of the reason the right say, because there's this logical fallacy, both the left and the right say the BBC is biased, therefore it's doing its job right. That doesn't work, because obviously, the right are far more organised, well, sorry, they're far more dominant in the press, I mean, infinitely more dominant than the left is. And the right in this country are so aggressive that any deviation, as they see it from their line, is seen as, you know, absolutely unacceptable. You know, they call judges who wanted parliamentary scrutiny of Article 50 as enemies of the people. So, I mean, you know, that's where they're at. And, you know, equally, what rankles them often is the social liberalism, you know, a lot of the people in this country are so aggressive that any deviation, as they see it from their line, is seen as absolutely unacceptable. The social liberalism, you know, a lot of the people in the BBC, you know, on immigration probably are pro-immigration, in fact, overwhelming, I'm sure they are. So, that's one of the reasons you get that attack. But from the left position, you know, the centre of gravity of the BBC is free market economics with a social conscience, probably, to a degree, is probably Blairism to, you know, to summon up. So, I think that's the problem. The left, as we understand it, the radical left is at its most powerful in the modern history of this country. It's never, ever being the leadership of any of the Labour Party, the mate of one of the two parties. And, you know, it is still treated by the media as though it is as irrelevant and as delusional as when it was completely marginalised, you know. And I know that because I remember, you know, I got a column at the Indian 2012, it feels worse now, you know, that group thing. It's more suffocating and that's partly a fear of the left assuming power. And it's also partly an attempt to return to those old, completely discredited certainties. And the media, you know, you know, lots of journalists, I suppose. I mean, they don't like being told this because it's not just seen as an attack on their own, you know, I made it even though I'm the best at everything. But every journalist, you know, has a self-image of being this independent, you know, very individualistic just wants the truth and all the rest of it. To suggest that there's group think it play is something they find very offensive as a consequence because it seems to remove the agency that they pride so much. And they don't understand a lot of them world view what group think is. And the reason I know they don't know what group think is is because my Twitter feed is full of people saying nobody tells me what to think. That's the point though, isn't it? Well, you want to think. You wouldn't end up as Noam Chomsky once put it to Andrew Ma. You know, he suggested that you wouldn't rise to the top of that if you needed to be told what to say or to be checked because it's impossible in the British media, structurally speaking to get there and have a world view which is fundamentally a rejection of the current status quo and its assumptions and neutrality in the media is all too often accepting the current status quo. That's not neutrality. I don't believe in neutrality objectivity but nonetheless, there was that suffocating group think for the reasons I've said and I think hearing Louis Goodall that Sky News presenter talk about actually there is group think and he succumbed to it himself that's a sign actually of him being a very good journalist in terms of if you were to scrutinize your own privilege and your own group think, then at least that gives you a chance to check those problems. But he's in a minority, so the inference is there aren't many good journalists in Britain then. No, I mean look, there are some excellent journalists and I want to be clear about that. Just think of my colleague Amelia Gentleman who has exposed this horrendous scandal over Windrush. You do get those dogged determined journalists who look for those sorts of injustices and expose them. I'm not denying that. I suppose that's the sort of journalism we can't really afford very often. No, and that's another problem because actually the funding models have collapsed so the budgets for investigative journalism which means often months of hard labour with no guarantee of results at the end of it, that's been slashed back and funny enough the Sunday times and the pre-murduck days used to be the absolute vanguard of investigative journalism and we've seen a massive decline of that, that's another problem. Particularly when you get the rise of well-funded PR agencies and so on which represent major companies and so on which often they're copy, as Nick Davis in Flat Earth News talked about they just write this PR and overworked, overstretched journalists it just gets re-urgitated in the media. So there are some excellent journalists despite it all. There are this army of insecure freelancers and sub editors and copy editors and all the rest in the media who are excellent and the vast majority of people are well motivated and I suppose this is the problem with the hysteria that what I said has generated because all these people can think of is a personal attack on themselves rather than understanding what a structural critique means which is it's looking at the structure of an institution and the consequences of that structure. But all they can see is we're under constant siege we're under constant attack we're not going to listen to any critic we're not going to look at the statistics of how unbelievably socially and representative we are we're not going to look at the fact that we are still we are utterly divorced from the political reality of modern Britain. We are going to instead close ranks we're going to double down against our critics and our opponents, we're going to hound them we're going to ridicule them we're going to demonise them we're going to call them mentally ill anything but say hang on a minute maybe just maybe there is a point here that alas you know it's going to take and that's why I lost patience because you know what in the last few years nothing has changed nothing it's got worse if anything