Hazel Brayden
Associate
Welcome everyone and thank you for joining this Mishcon Academy Session, part of a series of online events, videos and podcasts looking at the biggest issues facing businesses and individuals today. I am Hazel Brayden and I will be hosting today’s session. Today we are joined by James O’Brien to discuss his new book ‘How They Broke Britain’. For those of you who don’t already know, James is a renowned journalist and broadcaster best known for his work with LBC where he has a daily radio news programme which is incredibly popular and has a large following for its focus on current affairs, politics and social issues. So just to talk about your book, you’ve described this as a charge sheet in which you have held to account ten different individuals who you say have broken Britain.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Mm.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
What do you mean by charge sheet and what’s the premise of the book?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Well I look at really extraordinary things that have happened in relatively recent years. Some of them are obvious and the question of how have we created or how have we ended up in a place where these extraordinary things could happen. So most obviously I suppose becoming the first population in human history to vote to impose economic sanctions on itself was a very odd thing to happen and it gets odder the further we move away from the Referendum but then you know, how an earth could Boris Johnson become Prime Minister. How could somebody as serially and obviously dishonest as Boris Johnson rise to the highest office in the land and I thought that was a zinger of a question when the book got commissioned but by the time it was finished I also had to ask how an earth could Liz Trust become Prime Minister and inflict upon us the economic catastrophe that she did. And then there are smaller questions like how could Nadeen Dorries or Jacob Rees-Mogg end up in the Cabinet just a sort of succession of events that in isolation would have been unbelievable as recently as, as 2015. I identified three engines of change if you like that, that have brought this about. I mean I am also thinking about a break down in objective truth, even this week you have Rishi Sunak posting on social media saying, ‘everybody said that we’d never be able to bring inflation down’ and it’s been community noted by uses of social media and they’ve had to, it carries an actual correction so the Prime Minister being corrected because nobody said that they wouldn’t bring inflation down, everybody said inflations going to come down anyway whatever you do but the, but the ease and the casualness with which that sort of dishonesty has entered public discourse, Anyone who thought it was going to end when Boris Johnson left Downing Street has been deeply disappointed so the three engines of change that have created an ecosystem in which all of these things could happen including Kwasi Kwarteng’s fiscal event are mostly obviously, particularly toxic right wing media. One of the reasons why we don’t have a Fox News in this country despite the best efforts of some people latterly to set one up is because our newspapers occupy that space and have done for years. We just haven’t really noticed because we are constantly exposed to it but the toxicity of the Daily Mail and the, latterly the Daily Telegraph and the Murdoch empire has created an environment in which truth has been compromised and in which division has been commoditised.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
And do you think that will change with Rupert Murdoch handing over the reins and Paul Daka who’s 74 at some point he may retire?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
No, I, well the business of newspaper editing now is managing decline really so I think the newspapers will wither and their readership will die off and there won’t be a new generation of readers coming up to replace them but I don’t think they’ll depart from the... it’s a business model and you know, David Yeldham the former editor of The Sun talks to me in the book about when Roger Ailes arrived at Fox News whose kind of a… you know who he is. They got ahead of the internet, they realised that the internet was going to change the nature of hatred in the public space in such a profound way that in order for traditional media to survive, they had to go further faster so in many ways Fox News becomes the original troll and it was an actual business model and it was the point probably at which Rupert Murdoch, the boy who had ink in his blood, the son of a newspaper, the newspaper man’s son of a newspaper man. The last sort of vestiges of that part of him disappeared at that point and he went all in on the, the Fox News model of media which is some, I think his son will continue.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
How do you think GB News fits into this?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
That’s a good question and I am not entirely sure to be honest with you. They are haemorrhaging about 30 million pounds a year at the moment and they have to consider that they are getting something worthwhile in return so you look at who, who funds it mostly and it leads into one of the other engines of change, the sort of sinister network of lobby groups, secretly funded lobby groups that call themselves think tanks but we’ll get on to that. So one of the funders has a background or is invested in that world. The other one as far as I can tell is just furious because his son got cancelled as the banjo player in Mumford & Son and he’s decided to set up media organisations in which he can be, I don’t know, rehabilitated or, or resurrected but they’re getting something for 30 million pounds a year. All I can see that they are getting in return for this epic outlay is a sort of finger on the windpipe, fingers on the windpipe of the Tory party so that if they decide to lurch further to the right in the event of losing the next general election, then GP News will become almost their propaganda arm, it will become almost the media arm of the, of the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe of the Tory party who could end up, who could end up in charge.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
Do you think the media should be held to account more, there should be greater regulation of what editors and journalists say and do?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Regulations…
Hazel Brayden
Associate
As a journalist yourself?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
…yes regulation is tricky but I think and in my younger days I would have been furiously opposed to it but I, look with great power comes great responsibility and they don’t show any. We don’t realise how corrupted and how awful it’s become but because we are stuck in the middle of it and I would be part of the problem if I hadn’t had this weird career change and ended up on the radio speaking every day to the results of the indoctrination and to the results of the media so yes there should be Ofcom style regulation of reality. You shouldn’t be able to publish blatant lies either as opinion or worse, as news.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
And you’re not just critical of the right wing media, you are also very critical of the BBC, you say that it’s been hollowed out, it ties itself up in knots trying to be impartial and that it’s actually failing as a broadcaster.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Well it must be mustn’t it because of what we are living through. If you’ve got a Prime Minister who thinks he can lie publically to the population about something as simple as words that he claims were said a year ago, then the national broadcaster has in some sense failed. I love the BBC, I cherish it, I speak as a, someone who you know, in the words of Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone and if we were to lose the BBC we would be in ten different types of trouble compared to what we are in now. Do you remember, you probably don’t, it feels like a fever dream when all of the usual suspects were insisting that we didn’t need any trade deals, when we left the European Union, we’d be absolutely fine under WTO rules. Do you remember that? Let’s go WTO said all the people who had no idea whatsoever what they were talking about. We don’t need any trade deals. I looked into it I think briefly, Mauritania was a country that had no trade agreements in place. That’s it, that’s the only country that’s ever even tried it and I don’t think that was through choice, it was a Civil War or something horrible like that so they come in, someone comes into the production office, one of the producers and said, ‘I want to do something on the World Trade Organisation, we’ve got to, everyone needs to know what it is’ and the come in, ‘Pascal Lamy’s in town’. Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organisation so I said, ‘that’s fantastic, let’s, can he come in?’. He said, ‘Yeah we can get him, he’ll come on’. I said, ‘How long have we got on the programme’, he said, ‘Ten minutes probably twelve if we drop the weather’. Forget the weather no one cares about the weather.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
It’s always raining.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Yes exactly, it’s raining and Pascal Lamy will come in and so we start you know, coming out with the questions we are going to ask him, we need to find out what this is and then obviously the editor says, ‘We will need another guest as well’ and I said, ‘Why’.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
Balance.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Balance and I said, ‘But we’re talking to the former Director General of the World Trade Organisation about the World Trade Organisation’. How do you balance that? What you just get someone to come and say no you’re not or you don’t know what you’re talking about you only used to run the place and, and I wasn’t a big enough beast by any stretch of the imagination to make a stand on this so I just went along with it and I said, ‘Okay so who, who are we getting on? Who are we getting on to debate the former Director General of the World Trade Organisation about the role, purpose and function of the World Trade Organisation?’ Andrea Leadsom. Andrea Leadsom, absolutely extraordinary. So I am sitting in this kind of scenario, Pascal is a brilliant man, articulate, intelligent, compassionate, sympathetic to, to our plight after Brexit. Explains in great detail but very easy to understand, nice comprehensible language of quite complicated themes and, and its brilliant and I have to go like this, I have to go, ‘Pascal thank you so much. Andrea you disagree?’. It’s insane, I mean it, it is actually insane and it’s completely normal but it’s presented to viewers of the BBC…
Hazel Brayden
Associate
Yeah.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
…as is they are equal and opposite forces and authorities on a subject about which one person knows everything and the other person knows nothing.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
Is there a way to fix the BBC, the next thing in the book?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
I mean it’s not that long ago things weren’t that abnormal and in the context of the BBC they just need to, they just need to grow a pair and it’s easier said than done because it is frightening and if you are off air you are even more frightened of having, you always mention how much your house is worth, you know, well probably in this room it will sound like peanuts but your one and a half million pound house in Chiswick and, and if you are a manager at the BBC you probably haven’t been on screen ever or for 20 years. You don’t want that, they are frightened of all of that so, so they do these things. They try to appease organisations which in the case of The Mail and the Murdoch empire are dedicated to the destruction of the BBC, not just the dilution of it or the castration of it, they are dedicated to the destruction, they hate it and they hate it partly because it, it, well it allows people to access ideally truth as opposed to very deliberately slanted reporting of the same stories and they hate it because there’s no money in it for them so they are opposed to it both ideologically and commercially.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
And you dedicated your book to your dad.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Mm.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
And also you put a great quote from Noam Chomsky in there, who else has inspired you?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Blimey, um, I like people who, I like people who don’t seem to be in it for themselves so in public life that’s quite rare. I have found myself thinking quite a lot about Gordon Brown recently. I, I think there’s a pivot, I don’t know if you saw the former Prime Minister’s lined up at the Cenotaph recently and the pivot that David Cameron represents is objective extraordinary. So it goes, it goes Major, Blair, Brown and you could resurrect Margaret Thatcher for the purposes of this um idea. Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown okay, regardless of what you think about their politics, they are giants, political giants, statesmen and women of the fir… the highest order okay. And you have David Cameron as the pivot point and after David Cameron come Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. I find that extraordinary. I find that that segway from statesmen and women to charlatans, liars and idiots absolutely extraordinary. So I admire Gordon Brown because if someone had asked him why he wanted to be Prime Minister he would have probably given you a 500 page thesis on all the things that he wanted to do. Some of them may have been implausible, some of them may have been bonkers but the idea of Gordon Brown saying, ‘Oh I think I’d be rather good at it’ is just so utterly, utterly alien that, that I’d cite him as a journalist. Ian Hislop does an incredible job at Private Eye of, of keeping the truth out there when it’s a fairly unfashionable time to be doing it. There’s lots, lots of people I admire but in terms, in terms of inspiration and its people who, it’s people who aren’t in it for themselves and so that, in politics, in recent politics in living memory it would be Gordon Brown I suppose.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
And before I move to questions because there’s going to be quite a lot. I have to ask an incredibly cheesy question so I apologise in advance. How do we fix Britain?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Ah. Ahhhhh. I don’t think it’s as far away as I did when I started writing the book and although I don’t make this point in the book, it’s something that I’ve worked out answering this question while promoting the book. Amber Rudd, right. Amber Rudd resigned twice from the Cabinet less than five years ago or, or around that mark. The first time she resigned was because of individual ministerial responsibility, she had inadvertently mislead the House of Commons as a result of being given duff information about something that happened when Theresa May was Home Secretary but she bit the bullet, she did the right thing you know, within months Boris Johnson’s advisor, independent advisor on ministerial standards was resigning and shock and horror because he didn’t sack Pritti Patel after the investigation found her to be a bully but Amber Rudd resigned the first time on that point of principle and on the second time she resigned as Business Secretary and resigned the Whip over Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings culling the Tory party of any MP prepared to stand up and tell the truth about what was happening with regard to, to Brexit and that is not 20 years ago, that’s not a 100 years ago you know, that’s four or five years ago so the journey back to a semblance of normality, a lot of the problems, a lot of the contributing factors to the creation of the ecosystem were there but the aligning of the planets that happened with the madness of Brexit, the rampaging racism that was deployed to propel it and then the, the character of someone like Boris Johnson or, or Jeremy Corban, the way that these planets just aligned to create the worst possible scenarios, that’s just unlucky and we’re not that far away from politicians who have been caught with their fingers in the till being hounded out of office or politicians who have accidentally made mistakes, resigning of their own volition or politicians who are just disgusted by what their own party leader is doing, standing up and saying so and resigning. You know that old line about what it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing and so the answer to your question although it’s a little bit glib, is for good people to start doing something again I think.
Audience Member
You’ve spoken at length about the damage of the Conservative party and the right wing media have done to the country and the proper governance and honesty, in the interest of balance I was just wondering if you have any thoughts about what the left wing politics and media have done to the country and, and the proper governance?
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Yeah, um I might had to consult Andrea Leadsom before I answer that question. I don’t think there is, I, I mean from 2010 to 2015 the Labour party was sensible and moving in the right direction. From 2015 to 2019 it was a fever dream, it was absolutely bonkers and since 2019 I think Keir Starmer is doing a fairly decent job of carry a Ming vase across an ice rink. Um but I don’t think there is a left wing media in this country to speak of. I, I… not in anything like the way that balance would allow. You’d, you’d think immediately of The Guardian and The Daily Mirror. The Guardian is in so much danger of disappearing up its own fundament that it’s, it’s lost any real claims of representing voters um and The Daily Mirror is now owned by the same people that own The Daily Express so it’s a sort of an odd exercise. It’s still you know, a left wing newspaper but it’s not crusading or campaigning or commercially very successful so I know this isn’t really the answer to your question but I think it’s an illuminating question to ask because if I asked you now, if you think about the bogus victimhood that is constantly being fed to us by right win media, the idea of the woke mob or the tofu eating wokerati or the new elite or um, the anti-growth coalition, this idea that they are the benighted minority you know, they are the people under constant siege from incredibly powerful institutions and individuals. It’s utterly backwards because if I asked you now to make a list of people in this country who have a significant media platform and use it to promote and pursue essentially liberal or centre left ideas, make that list now.
Audience Member
Andrew ….
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Yeah well Andrew had to leave the BBC to do that so that means for 30 or 40 years he, he wasn’t doing that at all and he is now, latterly but that’s pretty much it. You are not allowed Carol Vorderman and Gary Lineka because they only do it on Twitter and yet to read the papers, to read the books that they write you’d think there were millions of us, literally millions and I can’t think of three. So that’s the left wing media and that’s the problem.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
Okay, thank you very much.
James O’Brien
Radio presenter, podcaster, author, and former tabloid journalist and television presenter
Thank you very much that was lovely, thank you.
Hazel Brayden
Associate
Thank you [applause]