Debatable; A Brutal Reality-Check or Blissful Ignorance

Neil vs Corbyn: A Brutal Reality Check for Labour

Just as Comrade Corbyn, having made a decent go of the Question Time Leader’s Special, was feeling confident. BBC’s very own bloodthirsty velociraptor Andrew Neil had just delivered an interview I think best summed up by this clickbait-y Daily Express Headline: “Andrew Neil shames Nicola Sturgeon 10 TIMES in just 43 seconds during car crash interview” and was set to take on Corbyn on Tuesday.

26/11/19:

Neil wasted little time drilling home the message that Jeremy Corbyn was not fit to be Prime Minister. There’s something particularly brutal about a one-on-one between a politician and a veteran journalist. Making it obvious that even when the Labour leader did have an answer, he didn’t believe it.

Jeremy Corbyn refused to apologise for anti-Semitism after comments by a chief Rabbi, which could be perceived either as a refusal of being racist or being sorry, either way, it went down like a bag of nails. Corbyn’s inability to clarify on taxing savings for those earning over 14k that went down like a bag of rusty screws.

Still, though whimpering voiced, and dead-eyed, rubber-jaw Jeremy bounces up again ready to take another upper-cut from The Spectator Chairman on behalf of the license-fee payer. Andrew Neil’s final question summed the bloodthirsty nature of this interview up.

He described a scenario, which I hope they cast Gerard Butler in the cinematic rendition of, where our military would have the new ISIS leader in their scopes and Comrade Corbyn would have to give the order to end his life. The Labour leader gave a politician’s answer - to a question which just about amounted to ‘Mr Corbyn would you kill a man if he was a baddie’ – leading to the third grilling of the evening.

A tense interview from start to finish which was amplified tenfold by the presenter’s refusal to let Corbyn reinforce his denial of racism or give the party line. At the time of writing this, the Prime Minister has not confirmed whether he will do an Andrew Neil interview. Given the brutal nature of Neil’s run-in with Corbyn, I can’t imagine the Prime Minister will be lining up to take the hot seat.

I believe if they have not agreed to a one-off interview with their most brutal presenter, it’s bad-practise for the BBC to broadcast one with the leader of the opposition at election time.

Jo Swinson and Nigel Farage are scheduled to be interviewed on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. If the interview with the PM happens after that, many postal voters will have already cast their vote.

LBC’s James O'Brien put it best on Twitter when he said: “If the chairman of the Spectator (@afneil) really can’t get an interview with the ex-editor of the Spectator (@BorisJohnson), he could always ask the current deputy editor to have a word with her husband (Dominic Cummings). Barclay brothers permitting, of course. #bbcimpartiality”

The First-Ever Climate Change Debate: The Conversations we Could be Having

On Thursday 28th of November, Channel4 held their Climate Debate; where the leaders were to debate how their party would best tackle the climate crisis from the government.

The debate featured Leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn, Liberal Democrats Leader Jo Swinson, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Green Co-Leader Siân Berry and Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price.

28/11/19:

Channel4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s open by introducing the leaders, gesture towards two ice-sculptures and saying: "we kept the invitation open to the Conservative party and Brexit party, they have not taken their places yet. Instead, a reminder, the ice caps are melting as politicians around the world fail to cut greenhouse emissions in time to stop rising temperatures."

Our nobile leader

In their absence, I wondered whether there was any possibility of the conversation centring around something productive. Momentarily forgetting about the Lib Dem leader.

One-by-one the leaders introduced themselves and got some good soundbites. Berry challenged the leaders with trying to ‘match the Green party’, Corbyn said the burden of net-zero carbon emissions was the burden of the companies, not the public. Adam Price opened by talking about his new-born and for his sake, he wanted to this to be a ‘turning point, not a tipping point’. Scotland’s First Minister said that the climate emergency was a ‘moral issue’.

Swinson then stood up and proudly declared: ‘The climate crisis is even more important than Brexit, but Brexit is a climate crime.’ The rest of the panel looked embarrassed, except for Corbyn who had the look of a man about to be ambushed.

It was clear early on that Swinson and Sturgeon’s goals for achieving net-zero carbon emissions were less ambitious than the rest of the panel. The First Minister was able to deflect from this issue because of Scotland’s record on the environment. Jo Swinson, who doesn’t currently run a country, appeared to default to Brexit.

Swinson did try to persist with this but as she was sitting on a panel of Remainers - and one 'neutral' - I can only assume she was confronting the sculptures.

Beyond that, the conversation was far more open, in the hour slot the candidates discussed the environmental implications of HS2(high-speed rail), the Heathrow expansion and whether we should be taxing meat products.

A decent, intellectually charged debate with a very different kind of challenge to the Labour party but an issue Corbyn is better at discussing than Brexit.

Sian Berry outlined clearly a lot of the vital issues and all the leaders were effective in scrutinising one another.

Whilst I’m sure Nigel Farage’s melting ice sculpture had as much as he would say on the issue – it’s a shame that Prime Minister Boris De Pfeffel, who YouGov are predicting will win a majority at this election, couldn’t make it.

I suppose that makes the PM, or at least the melting ice with the Tory logo, the winner: with this issue, as with many others at this election, ignorance is bliss.