The News Agents Podcast?

[JoyceMeadowcroft1]

Has anyone listened to last night's episode yet?

It is an extended interview with Wes Streeting. I really like what he has to say about managing policy around trans related legislation.

Lewis Goodall is, in my view, a closet TRA, who goes as far as he can as a news journalist trying to pitch himself as a balanced reporter. I think his line of questioning and what he chooses to follow up on, seeks to guide listeners to think any contend about trans issues are either ridiculous or coming from a dark place. I think Streeting in very smart and us on to this. He shared genuine concerns about the challenges trans people face, acknowledged that addressing these is not straight forward due to how they intersect with women's rights and when Goodall tried to bring it back to the Tories ridiculing trans people, he deftly moved on to listing many issues women face that the Tories are doing nothing about.

I think many GC will not like the podcast as Streeting was championing people with trans identities as well as women. Many TRAs won't like it as he was championing women, and regarding us as a class of our own - butI loved it.

Anyone else?

I agree I think WS came across very well in this. LG could have asked lots more insightful questions on this but didn’t. i think he gave WS an easy ride over the whole interview

I do too but am unsure as to motivation.
It could have been due to him wanting to garner support for WS. It could also be because he was trying to limit anything reasonable being said about the conflict between trans rights and women's rights because LG wants everyone to think there is nothing reasonable about women's concerns

Wasn't Streeting on the infamous fb group set up to hound GC women out of the Labour Party.

I think you might be right.
I think he is gradually getting a better handle on the issues.
He seems to have been someone whose eyes have been opened since the end of the 'no debate' era

But when will those women get an apology?

Wes didn't persuade me I'm afraid. Wes simply wants to play both sides against the middle. He is a canny politician with aims to be PM. Doesn't want to alienate any group.

I didn't realise before that he is gay. Wonder if that extends to dating transmen?

It's interesting that a powerful gay man like Streeting is making conciliatory noises. Does it make up for his membership of that anti women Labour group hounding left wing women out of the party? Only time will tell.
I've still got my eye on that golden bridge and do believe that - as we see played out daily - the overreach by extreme trans activists has made many decent people on the left finally realise that the unthinking support for the criminals, violent men and adults determined to transition other people's children is not the vote winner they once thought it was.

If you believe that WS is on the side of women, I have a bridge to sell that you may be interested in.

I listened to it too and thought WS came over well. If more Labour canvassers followed his lead there's be fewer threads like the one on here today.

I have no idea how sincere or not his views are and I have no problem with him being ambitious. He seems like a shrewd politician and he's aware that women are a key Labour constituency.

I used to really like Wes Streeting before all the trans stuff really took hold.

However, my first thought is he is a politician looking for votes in the near future. I can't help but be sceptical about him and probably hold him (and others) to a higher bar before I'm convinced.

I saw that News Agents had done this interview but haven't listened because I didn't want my blood pressure to rocket. But I might give it a listen.

As for Goodall, he's the right demographic to be a TRA apologist.

You want Labour politicians to lie to you, for reasons of political expediency?

A man who was part of a secret FB group to drive GC women out of the party for thought crime hasn't had some Damascene conversion to women's rights. He is pretending to listen to women, to get our votes. Then it will be right back to witch-burning.

How is your opinion any different from when we complain when TRAs say 'She said this but she really means that'? We have no idea how sincerely held WS's views are or not on this - it's possible they've changed who knows?

I don't want to be lied to - I just assume all politicians are prepared to say the things that will help them the most.

I don't like being cynical, but I think ws has seen the way the tide is going and is acting accordingly.

Pretending to espouse views that are diametrically opposed to your previous ones (Streeting) is not the same as making false claims about someone else's views (TRAs).

And, if Streeting were being honest now, he would acknowledge that his previous views were wrong, and apologise to the women affected. He would be horrified and remorseful about how he bullied GC women. The fact that he he shows no regret for his vile behaviour towards female colleagues tells you everything about his level of sincerity now.

Unfortunately for him, he was part of a group that wanted to remove gc women from the Labour Party. Ten years ago this could have been safely forgotten about, but the Internet never forgets.

LG isn’t even a secret TRA. He’s just a regular TRA. I’ma regular listener of The News Agents and thus far every politician he has chosen for his in-depth Friday interviews has been a fellow TRA (names we FWR regulars all know), although he generally steered away from that conversation, so that if you didn’t know that politician’s TRA stance it wouldn’t have been obvious. But one week there was somebody whose name I wasn’t quite familiar with - as I was listening I mused whether she was his first non-TRA… and then LG actually raised the “trans issue” as he calls it (and I thought 💡 oh here we go 💡), and she obligingly recited the whole “most marginalised, BeKind” script 😑

I haven't listened to the interview, but as a general comment...

I think many who demonised gender critical women will eventually come to the same views. I also don't think they will ever allow themselves to recognise their new position is the same as the one they were once railing against.

They've never bothered to understand what we are really saying so how will they even know it's the same thing?

Nope, when the tide turns the narrative will be that the Right Side of History people couldn't see the problems with extreme TRAs because the weird bigotted nazi-aligned feminists were throwing so much transphobic noise about. And the reasons the Right Side people have a more cautious approach to TRA demands now are totally different to the reasons TERFs had, which were just irrational hatred.

The News Agents generally has been really disappointing. They make a big deal of being free of BBC editorial constraints, but all they do is peddle the same Centrist/metropolitan Left tropes as the Beeb. They are so incurious and unchallenging.

For me, the discourse on slavish acceptance of trans rights is endemic across all centre/centre left journalists and commentators.

Thus I have zero trust on their integrity here. I see Emily Maitliss get irate about so much inequity and dishonesty in politics, especially the Tories. Yet I've seen nothing from her except tumbleweed on the Cass Report, the SNP misadventure on Adam Bryson etc.

Ditto Sopel and Goodall. I feel so let down by the absolute brick wall these people have put up.

I agree @MissLucyEyelesbarrow and @RealityFan .

I thought being gaslit by people shouting in my face was bad enough. But being gaslit by ignoring, or should I say "Stonewalling", this subject is even worse.

We all know what's going on here, Helen Joyce's theory on the sunk costs of trans being too high a price to pay re inability to pivot away.

Right now, I have zero idea what WS or KS really believe. My hunch is that WS has likely pivoted to an agnostic POV, not out of principle, but pure cold calculation and electoral pragmatism. KS likely the same, but even less transparent and forthcoming.

In any other era, let's say the days of Brian Walden, Sir Robin Day, Jeremy Paxman, their views and opinions and policies here would be interrogated to within an inch of their lives.

Heavyweights like Tony Benn, Dennis Healey, Margaret Thatcher, David Owen, Shirley Williams etc were regularly mauled by these giants of fearless interviewing.

Now we have gentle games of ping pong from the likes of the Newsagents, Laura Kunnesberg etc.

He was also on Times Radio with Fi and Jane recently. I didn’t hear it but I did hear the episode after, where someone wrote in to say he gave a politicians answer when being questioned about Stonewall. I was very surprised to hear this being read out. Maybe it’s the difference between the BBC and Times Radio?

On Wes generally, I agree with a pp - he’s seen which way the wind’s blowing. He worked for Stonewall, let’s not forget.

It's a comfortable club. The only red mist from them is on Tory misdemeanours.

Walden, Day, Paxman, must be spinning in their graves.

Maitliss is the biggest disappointment of all, her big fanfare over Brexit/Trump populism "both sides-ism" impulse poisoning BBC incisive reporting. Yet what has she done to really interrogate the truth since leaving? Not much.

Even the red mist about Tories must be pretty fake, given that EM attended George Osborne's wedding, and Jon Sopel made a speech at it.

And, yes, I agree about EM, in particular, being a disappointment. Newsnight is nothing like as hard-hitting as it was in Paxman's day, but both EM and Kirsty Wark are decent journalists. EM, is actually a lot less hard-hitting since she left - that's one of the big downsides of podcasts- they are all competing for guests, so they dare not give the guests a proper grilling.

Do we remember Jeremy Paxman not letting Michael Howard off the hook fifteen times..."Did you overrule him?".

Michael Howard never really politically recovered from that mauling.

Can you imagine Maitliss or Kuensberg, or dare I mention him, James OBrien, fifteen times pushing Starmer for an answer to "Can a woman have a penis?" and fifteen non-answers?

Forget Kim Kardashian, that would be "the day the internet broke".