The Guardian’s centre of political gravity has always been pretty clear – it’s liberal and progressive – but it has also always been a home to diverse voices. In a turbulent political period like the one we are going through that balance can be tested.
Some Guardian readers, I know, are frustrated that most of the British press is ranged against Labour in this election – some newspapers opened up the campaign by openly calling for the party to be crushed – and feel that some Guardian columnists haven’t been supportive enough. So when I was asked to co-present a daily podcast during the UK election campaign with columnist Jonathan Freedland, one of the things we aimed to do was to showcase the Guardian’s plurality of perspectives.
Jonathan and I come from different wings of the Guardian readership coalition – As I see it, he’s towards the liberal end, I’m towards the socialist end. And the podcast has worked very nicely as a result. Although Jonathan and I have differences in opinion, I have respect for him as a writer and a thinker. We have different angles, certainly, but I think they complement each other rather than jar.
So how does it work? We record the podcast every morning, Monday to Thursday, after the Guardian’s morning conference – an open meeting where any journalist can discuss coverage and debate topical issues. Phil Maynard and Gabriela Jones in the multimedia department are the ones who do the real work: as well as recording and editing the podcast they come up with a rough script that structures the show. That’s to stop us waffling, and indeed when it’s time to wrap up, they give us vigorous hand signals.
Before we turn up, they ask us to think of a topic each for the day, or they suggest one. We like to vary the subject matter: for example, the latest is on polling, the generational divide that’s opened up, why this isn’t the Brexit election it was supposed to be, a television debate with candidates from the night before, the parties’ policy proposals, and so on. For my part, I like to mix up two things: the stuff I’m hearing from political insiders and what’s on the political pages of our newspapers, and then what I’m hearing on the doorstep, what local campaigners and candidates are telling me. Too much political journalism involves camping in Westminster and gossiping. Hopefully we’re mostly avoiding that.
So it’s not just the Owen and Jonathan show, we have a range of guests. To kick off, we had our colleague Zoe Williams, who is very keen on a progressive alliance. Another was Stephen Bush: the New Statesman political writer, one of Britain’s finest political journalists for my money. This week, we had the Guardian’s Jessica Elgot, a political reporter who has been zig-zagging around the country with the campaigns.
We’re always asked to talk about a piece of journalism that caught our eye, too. Naturally there’s a bias towards Guardian pieces, though one day we looked at a piece by the rightwing commentator Iain Martin in the Times – talking about the bloodletting happening in the Tories’ campaign.
Overall, it’s been a real success, and I’m glad to say we’ve reached No 3 in the nation’s podcast charts. What’s helped, of course, is an election campaign that has deviated from expectations. The Tories called this election to crush the opposition. We don’t know the result yet, of course, but we do know their terrible campaign has not gone to plan. Labour’s, meanwhile, has been excellent. That means rather than just being a predictable – and depressing – onward journey to inevitable electoral armageddon, it’s been one of the most exciting campaigns in modern British history.
There are only a few days left. But it’s been an absolute joy to do the podcast: thank you so much for listening. And, with my partisan hat on – I am an opinion writer, after all – let’s hope the last few podcasts are a story of Tory woe and Labour triumph.
