Go slow and fix things

On Newspeak, and national and student politics

There was only ever one swear word on my radio show, and thankfully my grandparents weren’t listening that week. To be fair, the guest had gone 36 hours without sleep and still led a great conversation.

Such was the weird world of ‘Newspeak’, a weekly political talk show on 87.7 Bailrigg FM (the university student radio station) that I hosted on and off for two years. It combined farcical conversations with a deeply formative way of doing political discourse. 

Now in my final year, I feel Newspeak (listen here) had lessons to teach in both student and national politics, and it is my hope that it has made a counter-cultural contribution to both, however short-lived.

Newspeak is ‘freedom of speech going live’, a place for discussing the world with honesty and integrity. What this means is that the show is built on certain values above winning debates or landing soundbites. We invite guests on each week and allow them to explore certain topics through conversation with each other, and provide unfamiliar viewpoints for each other and our listeners. 

What is British identity? Is it right to block roads in protest? Is fighting in the    Sahel neo-colonialist? The term ‘newspeak’ is Big Brother’s thought-suppressing language in Orwell’s ‘1984’, so it’s an ironic name for a show emphasising diversity of opinion. We encourage disagreement, and the joy of the new ideas that always follow when disagreement is done well.

This was often an ideal. Conservations could become soft, and my questions often lacked bite. But some weeks you could hear the wheels turning. Genuine, unexpected points of recent conversation involved: are there ideals higher than individual life? (In Conversation with Matthew Dowling – Oct 2021) Is it morally more wrong for individuals or corporations to not pay tax? (‘Biden Doctrine’ & Pandora Papers – Oct 2021) Aren’t progressives in the culture wars just students with no incentive to think carefully? (British Culture Wars – Feb 2022) And which cake is better – Nanny Blair’s sponge, or Ed’s Grandma’s apple puff pastry? (The World in 2022 – Jan 2022)

This type of give-and-take conversation wouldn’t work at a national level, obviously. When Dominic Raab pops up on Andrew Marr to defend government policy, he can’t and won’t start to say ‘well yes, maybe the Scottish National Party do have a point there.’ Government cannot engage in running debate and reconsideration over policy; that’s what elections do, and the consequences of continual stop-start are too high for constant debate. 

But journalists can change. Nick Robinson and Jeremy Paxman represented a frustrating approach to interviews that goes like this: ‘you once said this – but now you don’t. Why? Are you mad? And are you tough enough? [politician repl]-but that’s not right, because you also said this’. It’s like muscled lumberjacks chopping at stone: fun to watch, sparks flying everywhere, but ultimately frustrating. You don’t hear anything new, and there’s no space for the story of who people are to emerge. So we need something different.

Consider Emily Maitlis. Veteran journo, and the interviewee of Prince Andrew. Maitlis realised there was an absurd, unmissable story to be told, as long as she asked the right questions and stepped back so Andrew had room to fall on his face. Newspeak is similar: there is always a story to be told. The trick is allowing it to be said. 

Last year we were discussing BLM and XR. Instead of spending an hour splitting hairs over the best approaches to racism, our Conservative guest discussed his experience as a Roma individual compared with that of a black Brit. The conversation was flipped, and the result was brilliant. Politicians aren’t incentivised to change their approach, but when journalists listen for the story - give it the space to emerge by adapting their questioning and tone – everyone benefits.

One group of politicians who could learn something are our student politicians – those in party politics and union politics. Student politics is amateurs playing out painfully obvious routines via organisational incompetence, never realising that the lower stakes of uni politics offers the space to do things differently. Newspeak has had various student emerges politicians on the show, all of them polite and thoughtful. 

But as soon as many leave the studio, gossip, bringing various infighting and tensions to life, all played out on a backdrop of lancfessions, group chats, and racial frictions. Where Newspeak (hopefully) prioritises  respect and humility, students politics revels in its absence of decency and the joy of victory. Kindness ends when it requires sacrifice or ceding ground to an opponent.

This is the not the only way. There has been some fantastic work by LUPS and the various politics societies this year at consistently bringing groups together and making potential opponents less mysterious (and therefore harder to slag off). 

The recent council by-election was incredibly decent thanks to a pact by candidates. And I hope that Newspeak has helped in clearing barriers and enabling different stories to be shared together, reflecting that, in the conflict of respectful conversation, something better emerges. What Newspeak has certainly given me the confidence to say is that if you want a different tone to our student politics – really want it – it’s there for you to make happen.

Thanks for listening everyone.

Theo