MORE ON NAUGHTIE

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This morning's Today programme featured an James Naughtie interview with Nick Clegg. There was just one interruption in an interview that last nearly 5 1/2 minutes (I.C. of 0.2).
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The most striking Naughtie interview, however, was with Ed Balls. This was so typical of the man, beginning as it did with a compliment to Labour hidden in a seemingly barbed question. Asking whether, in these straightened economic times, it was right to spend money on a "scheme to put laptops and broadband in the homes of 270,000 low-income families", Naughtie began with these words (with my insertions!): "A lot of people (really?) might say, 'well, this is rather a good thing. If we had loads of money we should be giving grants to people to get laptops, broadband' (I can't say that I'd ever see that as an important use of tax-payers' money!), but surely in the circumstances we're in it's a classic example of something which is going to have to go - after all you're slashing the university budget." (Naughtie is Chancellor of Stirling University, and is not happy - as has been noted here before - about proposed government cuts in public funding to our universities. It's a bugbear of his, and if Jim Naughtie has a bugbear he's not afraid to share it with the world.)
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Note that Ball's first answer went on for 1 minute 11 seconds, without interruption.
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Naughtie's second question also began deferentially: "Right, I take the point about enterprise in education and the argument you make about investing in the future..." I doubt he'd begin a question to Michael Gove like that! That same question, as it proceeded, contained another bit of pro-Labour spin: "Why has it taken the government more than a year to admit that a world financial crisis is going to mean deep cuts?" This is, of course, the Labour view - that the UK's current economic woes can all be blamed on the world financial crisis, nothing to do with the economic stewardship of Gordon Brown since 1997, nothing to do with Labour's insanely reckless levels of public spending during the boom years and even crazier levels of borrowing that have resulted in our country's near-bankruptcy. Naughtie just can't stop himself from blagging for his Labour pals.
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As I've pointed out before (on many occasions), when Naughtie interrupts a Conservative or UKIP spokesman (or a right-of-centre think-tanker), he makes those interruptions hit home, stopping the interviewee in his tracks or making him swerve in another, unintended direction, whereas (as I've also pointed out before) this rarely happens when he interviews Labour (or Lib Dem) politicians. This interview was a classic in this regard. A "but hang on" at 5.47, for example, was not followed through on and Balls was allowed to finish his point. There was only one exception to this and, as a result, this interview too scores a tiny I.C. of 0.2. The closing attack on the Conservatives, which even some of the other left-wing BBC interviewers would have felt duty bound to curtail, was not curtailed by biased James Naughtie. Why would he? It's the sort of thing he likes to hear. "Jim, it's important that you let me make this point", said Balls. "Yes," said Jim, meekly. Extraordinary.
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Take a listen and see what you think:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8451000/8451220.stm