FIRST things first. The title of Ruth Davidson’s new Sunday-night show on LBC is terrible. An Inconvenient Ruth. Seriously? There’s trying too hard and then there’s the simply trying.
Title apart, how did the Baroness’s first show go? Pretty well for the most part. Apart from a few technical gremlins that were a result of the socially distanced way radio has to work these days, Davidson made a decent fist of this hour-long interview. Her interviewee was some bloke called Tony Blair, former Prime Minister. A Labour one at that. Yes, such things once existed, children.
In politics I firmly adhere to the “never trust a Tory” line of argument and Davidson is definitely no exception to that rule. The times I’ve shouted at her on the telly or the radio … Still, as a radio presenter, she passes muster.
For the most part here she was happy to step back and let Blair do all the heavy lifting, only weighing in now and then to push the former Prime Minister when he waffled, or to lament the odd New Labour policy such as the introduction of university fees. “I had a full grant in my first year,” she lamented. (Not that she was suggesting it should be reversed, mind.)
It wasn’t a confrontational interview. She gave Blair plenty of room to talk, something he was always very good at. If anything, perhaps it was all a little too polite (not something in my limited experience of the station you could say often about LBC). And that included Blair too, who passed up the chance to have a proper go at the current crop of utter incompetents in power in Westminster (though he did have a veiled swipe at Jeremy Corbyn).
In short, Davidson might well have a future as a broadcaster. If that encourages her to give up politics, all the better.
Listen Out For: Archive on 4: Broadcasting Life, Radio 4, tonight, 8pm. Sue MacGregor looks back on five decades as a broadcaster as she bids farewell to Radio 4.
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