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George Osborne’s latest budget, this week’s climate change conference in Paris, and Brunel students’ spurning of rent-a-gob Katie Hopkins are the subjects of our latest episode, in which Jimmy and Jazza sound off about subjects they are vaguely familiar with.
The shadow of Tony Blair is longer than that of any living British politician, the two-and-a-half term Labour prime minister now one of the most reviled and admired characters in Westminster and beyond.
But with much debate about him linked to his disputed status as a “war criminal”, it is fascinating to hear a different side of him in this interview with the comedian Matt Forde, a former Labour aide.
For all the differences between the front benches in the Commons at the moment there is one thing that unites them: both sides are headed by career politicians.
Not the same sort of career politicians, mind. George Osborne, the Tory chancellor, is a man who prides himself on belonging to what he terms the parliamentary “guild”. As described by his biographer Janan Ganesh, this is defined by the view that:
“Politics is a trade with its own skills and codes that can only be learned on the job. It is not an amateur vocation for talented people from other fields.”
Two swords’ length away from Osborne, his shadow John McDonnell is of a different view.
Labour chancellor John McDonnell may have provoked laughter in the Commons this week for quoting from Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book, but at least he did not defend the views of the Chinese tyrant.
The same cannot be said, however, for international development shadow secretary Diane Abbott, who told the Beeb’s This Week that were some upsides to Chairman Mao’s murderous rule when asked why people wore t-shirts with his image on.
Brunel became the latest university this week to diminish the standing of free speech as students turned their backs on rent-a-gob Katie Hopkins and then quit the lecture theatre.
Footage uploaded to the Internet showed the incident, which took place on Monday as Hopkins and other panellists debated the future of the welfare state as part of the university’s 50th anniversary celebrations.