Blog Relations

The Sun Newspaper has scooped the first ever podcast interview with a British Prime Minister. Tony Blair, distinctly in his sunset years, if not months, tells political editor George Pascoe-Watson, that Sun Readers should “shop a yob.” It’s all part of Blair’s eye-catching initiative, otherwise known as his “Respect Agenda” that allows the police to confiscate money, and courts to chuck home-owners out of their own property.

You might think that a journo would have some probing questions for a PM on a policy that manages to be both half-baked and Stalinist at the same time. Sorry to disappoint you, but this is the standard of questioning

Pascoe-Watson. You basically want to tell Sun Readers that you are on their side today.

Blair. It’s essential for people to realise that we are on their side to help get this done.

I found it spell-binding. It’s the first time we’ve been able to hear just how far the PM has the land’s best selling newspaper eating candy out of his hand, and then going down on its knees and licking his boots. You don’t get the full sense of the Murdoch press’s debasement just by reading the newspapers. The obsequiousness rings out loud and clear in the podcast.

Otherwise, I fear that Podcasts are doing our democracy a dreadful disservice. Politicians are starting to see them as a soft option. The Telegraph gave Tory leader David Cameron seven uninterrupted minutes in which to bore their podcast listeners silly. I really do hope that politicians don’t see podcasting as a way to by-pass the more probing interviews of the BBC. There’s no reason why a podcast interview shouldn’t be as good as a radio one – except that they are currently done by newspaper journalists who are at the beck and call of their publishers who in turn are fawning to politicians.

Thanks to Sun Reader Joel Cere for pointing this out.