Electoral Dysfunction's Ruth Davidson, Jess Phillips and Beth Rigby on podcasts vs interviews and toeing party lines

Aside from being an all-female line-up, how do you hope to stand out in a pretty crowded political podcast market?

JESS PHILLIPS: I think of all the podcasters I am the only one who is actually an elected politician, still, [with] the ability to actually be like, “That was nothing like that, I was in the room and it was very boring… I was playing Candy Crush on my phone and you’ve made it out to be the Night of Long Knives!” Or to get the genuine sense of exactly how people are feeling. This week it would be politicians going to Reform, or the racism row that seems to be breaking out; it’s all well and good looking at it from one perspective, but being there and seeing the people who are involved I think makes a massive difference.

RUTH DAVIDSON: A lot of the podcasts out there feel very Westminster-centric, and Jess and I try very much to be of the place we’re from. If you cut Jess in half, it would say Birmingham like rock. I’m very much of Scotland, so it’s not just that our accents are from outside the Westminster bubble, our experiences are and we go to London to do a job. We have lives outside of what we do and I think that gives us perspective.

JP: The bit of politics that is actually about the people, not Westminster, I think is often missing. No one in the country is chuffed by the National Insurance cut, they haven’t noticed and they don’t care. [Our podcast] is a link to the actual people.

So being an all-women lineup is immaterial?

RD: It just happens that we’re women. Neither Jess nor I in our political lives have traded on the fact that we’re women, we’ve just done our jobs to the best of our abilities in a way that we are our authentic selves, and it turns out that sometimes our authentic selves are a bit more authentic than some people were expecting!

Jess, you’re a serving Labour MP, and Ruth, you’re a Tory peer in the House of Lords. How truthful can you be with your audience if you need to be seen toeing the party line?

JP: Listeners will hear straight through lines being parroted out. At the moment, you’ve got to feel for ministers and shadow ministers going out and saying a line in the morning, and by the end of the day it’s no longer the line, as if viewers can’t tell what is happening. But if you’re honest and you say, “I’m not going to parrot the party line but I will defend it because…” name it for what it is, and people will tolerate it. But you also have to show the listener that you are willing to critique your own side, and both Ruth and I have.

RD: I have been criticised in my own party for being over-critical of Boris Johnson and despairing of Liz Truss. Actually with Rishi [Sunak], I have a huge amount of sympathy for the job he’s trying to do; he’s a serious man who works hard and is trying his best. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t say how... the man has a tin touch for politics. The politics of politics, like that is not his forte!

JP: We play the ball, not the man, so I will sit and say, “What the bloody hell…?” about Rwanda or whatever it is in the news that week. I’m obviously going to criticise the Tory Party, but we’re not nasty about it, because actually people don’t like the nastiness.

What is your role, Beth? As a political editor for a national broadcaster, do you have to make sure you are more neutral?

BETH RIGBY: I’m not going to be giving my own personal political opinions, but I do get to be a bit more myself [than on TV]. I can show a bit more of my personality, I can have fun, because they’re fun to be with.

When you’ve been doing political journalism for as long as I have, it’s trained into you to try to see all sides of a story of an argument. I’m more interested in what Jess and Ruth think. I don’t think what I think in that moment is relevant. I’m not the practitioner, I’m the conduit.

There were issues around Trump last week where, you know, I had to make sure that if something is said I give the counterpoint. They’re like Arsenal strikers and I’m like the umpire…

RD: Beth, you’re just betraying women who like football there because they’re not umpires in football, they’re referees!

JP: Because she is the political editor of Sky, it’s more difficult for her than it is for me, whereas every other interaction I’ve had with Beth Rigby, it was definitely more difficult for me than it was for her.

With the friendly, relaxed environment of a podcast, a politician might well think this promises an easier ride than a live radio slot on, for example, the Today Programme. Do podcasts mean the end of the great combative political interview?

JP: Well then, they’ll have to get better at it because I actually think podcasts have come about because of the death of the brilliant political interviews. I don’t think it’s the thing that killed them.

What is different about appearing on a podcast?

JP: When I resigned from the Labour frontbench, I could have been on every single broadcast every minute of every day, but I didn’t want someone just to clip me up saying basically “I was p***ed off but no hard feelings”. I just didn’t think that something so simple could be got across without a bit of nuance, so the only media I agreed to was The News Agents. I went on The News Agents because it was a podcast where I thought we would have an actual conversation and the space for politics to be more complicated. I got to tell the truth of what had happened, and I think that is missing [from political news interviews]. I think the political podcast space is the one where interest and intrigue actually flies.

RD: I blame Peter Mandelson. Because of the way news management happened under New Labour, because of its efficacy and because we hadn’t seen anything like it before, you’ve actually seen kind of almost pale facsimiles of it from everyone that’s come ever since, this idea that you’ve got to land a line, and that’s it. And the rise of social media has reinforced that idea that you’ve got to say something very short, sharp, black and white, and actually most people live their lives in a series of grey shades. What podcasts do is offer that analysis, that nuance that you don’t get in news bulletins.

You all reveal a fair amount of chat about things besides politics, including your family life. Do you feel happy to share?

JP: I’m happier about it than my family are, although funnily enough they don’t mind it when I’m on the podcast. I can’t separate my political life from my personal life, especially when the kind of politics that I am involved in is so rooted in the family that I come from and the experiences that we’ve had.

RD: My partner Jen and I have kind of guide rules, so that I know that if I operate within them, it’s always OK. About six-and-a-half years ago, both my parents were diagnosed within six months with Alzheimer’s. That’s a real-life experience that I can bring to the table. I’ve talked about my clinical depression, I’ve talked about being a gay mum, I’ve talked about lots of different things because it’s part of who I am and part of who you are defines your politics.

BR: I’m quite open about my life. I don’t really overthink it too much, I think those days where broadcasters used to be very detached and almost broadcasting from their ivory tower, is just not who I am. I love talking about my kids, but I keep them a bit out of it, particularly, you know, my son doesn’t want his mum publicly talking about him on a podcast, that is so embarrassing…

You clearly have a lot of respect for one another. But if your chumminess is apparent in your podcast chats, could that lead to a sense of an elite who are “all in it together” and not serving the electorate?

JP: There is a danger of chumminess, no doubt about it, but fundamentally I want the truth to be told, and it is true that we are friends with each other in Westminster, and actually I am never more popular than when I say that with the public. I don’t actually worry about the chumminess. That is, I would say, a political slant taken by commentators, not the public. I think they prefer it if we just try and get on with each other and sort things out. I think it’s different if you’re a bit posh; chumminess amongst the posh is intolerable; I find it intolerable.

RD: The secret is almost all elected politicians have at least one pal of a different party that’s a close pal, and sometimes a lot closer than people on their own side, because it’s such a weird job and you need to be able to vent and to explain, but do it in a way that’s not going to make it back to your whip. You need to be able to blow off steam, and you can almost only do that with somebody from a different party.

Equally, there could be criticism for you, Beth, that you’re too friendly with people your role demands you hold at a distance?

BR: One person did say, “When did journalists get really chummy with politicians, you’re there to hold them to account…?” so I had a think about it. We are in a world where people are turning off politics and politics really matters. I can be a badass as political editor some days, but it doesn’t mean I can’t also go and speak with Jess and Ruth and talk about politics in a slightly different way like I might talk about it with my mates.

JP: The truth is politicians are friendly with journalists. I’ve been for dinner in a social situation with a journalist who has hauled me over the coals the very next day.

A couple of quickfire questions for all of you...

Are we looking at a May or autumn election?

JP: I literally change by the hour, but I’m back on May now.

RD: I still think it’s more likely to be in the autumn.

BR: I think it’s more likely to be the autumn.

And what prospect do you foresee of the Conservative Party’s survival? At the election and beyond?

RD: I must say as the longest serving democratic political party in the western world, I think it’s possible they’ll survive! I think the Parliamentary benches will look a bit different…

JD: Are they going to win? Then the answer’s no, there’s no way the Tories are going to win, but yeah... culling rather than a mass extinction!

Sky News podcast Electoral Dysfunction is available every Friday on all podcast platforms. This week’s episode will be live from Thursday (28th March), ahead of the Easter weekend.

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