He’s an extremely difficult man to interview (I have interviewed him myself, long ago) as if you push him too hard he starts whirling and becomes personal, he also throws almost-true facts at you. You can see him doing it in this interview - answers the question - throws in right wing talking point which is hard to unpack - swerves back to the question. Then he can pull out his talking point later for social media.
When I was a working journalist, politicians might put their own spin on the truth, but if you confronted them with a bald, hard fact, they would feel obligated to accept it, even if it was with a “yes, but”. These days it’s full-on 1984 DARVO - where Jess Phillips is painted as an apologist for domestic violence (for heavens sake).
That said, LK needed to be much tougher. It’s tricky as you will get further with him (including further scrutiny) by being polite, and he creates an interview binfire if you push him. But there is another factor, and that is the BBC’s reputation if they are seen to be too deferential to someone who is such a worrying influence on UK society (and I don’t just mean Brexit).
That said, he’s the head of a minor party in the Commons, and mates with two of the most powerful and worrying people in the world, so the media cannot ignore him and nor should they. They are also aware that for many years journalists agreed with the “don’t give them the oxygen of publicity” argument for the BNP and the BNP exploited that vacuum and then imploded once given proper scrutiny. I think that could be the wrong lesson though, as Trump has shown how to get around this sort of scrutiny, you just insist up is down.
Farage knows there’s nothing we could do in a national inquiry report which wasn’t done by Baroness Jay in her report. He knows that since the Jay recommendations weren’t implemented, it’s pointless going around the horn again (and hugely expensive). If people disagree, I would really suggest reading Baroness Jay’s report. It’s hard reading, and includes factors which aren’t getting as much attention as they should, such as children’s homes being built on cheaper land meaning kids in the cities are being removed miles away from their homes and becoming more vulnerable as they do not have their wider support network, but also quite a lot of hard lessons for those involved in social work in Rotherham at the time.
Wes Streeting did well, I thought. And it was certainly the case that LK intended Streeting should “reply” to Farage, and gave Alan Johnson a further opportunity to defend Jess Phillips. But that’s not much use when it’s the Farage interview which will make it onto right-wing social media.