INEQUALITY IN THE 'TODAY' STUDIO

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Today's Today was driven by a report on inequality from the National Equality Panel, set up in 2008 by Harriet Harman. This organisation is headed by John Hills, Professor of Social Policy at the BBC's beloved London School of Economics.
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There was certainly a great deal of inequality about the amount of time each of the political parties got to make their cases on the issue. Theresa May (pictured left and right) for the Conservatives got least (3 minutes 42 seconds). David Laws for the Lib Dems did slightly better (4 minutes 8 seconds). Taking the lion's share, however, (and some of the leopard's too), was Labour's Harriet Harman (7 minutes 5 seconds), getting almost twice as long to wow the nation as Mrs May.
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You might have expected that Harriet Harman would have been given a rougher ride, if only to balance out this inherent unfairness. Not a bit of it. The respective interruption coefficients for the three politicians were 0.6, 0.5 and 0.6.
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Sarah Montague did the interview with Theresa May. Here's one of her questions: "But what's clear from this report is that it's been a problem of the last forty years, that at the time when the Conservatives were in power, it rose, the gap between top and bottom, from 3 times earnings in the '70s, rose to 4 times in the '80s, and the report makes it clear that there are things that the Labour government have done which have made a difference, they just haven't on the scale required." Mrs May's attempt to answer this was soon interrupted by an "OK, what would you do?". Theresa bridled a little at this, saying "Well, that's what I'm just about to come onto, thankyou." A lot more of that attitude is needed! She then began to list what the Conservatives would do but was interrupted again with another abrupt question, "And the abolition of inheritance tax?" As Theresa May immediately pointed out (and how can Sarah Montague really not have known this?), "Well, nobody's abolishing inheritance tax. We will be raising the threshhold on inheritance tax." That was a pretty simple error for a top interviewer to have made - if error it be.
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Neither Harriet Harman nor David Laws had to face anything like that. They were interviewed by Justin Webb. Both got to attack the Tories - and were not interrupted while they did so.
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