James O’Brien is quite optimistic about the youth of today. A woman has stood to ask him what is to be done about a generation perceived to only care about lip injections and Kardashians, but O’Brien- gently- isn’t having any of it. Complaints on the apathy of youth go back to time immemorial, and anyway, plenty of fifty-year olds watch the Kardashians and don’t participate in politics. There was a time not long ago when the Buggles lamented that ‘video killed the radio star’. “It didn’t,” says O’Brien, “I’m here.”
And indeed he is. Hot off his LBC show, which ended only half an hour before he joined Gary Robertson at the Edinburgh Book Festival, O’Brien is breezy and easygoing on stage, with one arm draped over his chair, red socks peeping under the hem of his pants. In conversation with Robertson, he is confident and unapologetic in his answers, calling on his experiences working on Fleet Street, the BBC, and LBC with wit and candor. Those used to his style, and there are about 1.5 million listeners who are, will be familiar with a voice that volleys between smugness and self-deprecation with surprising ease.
Here to talk about his newest book, How They Broke Britain, O’Brien opines on the causes of the ecosystem that allowed for the current status of the United Kingdom at home and abroad, which he lists as right wing media, right wing politicians, and the think tanks that enable them. “The myth of Trickle Down [economics],” he says, “Let them do whatever they want and that will somehow benefit everyone” is an enduring philosophy that is sometimes taken up by blinded idealists, but much more often by opportunists with an eye for the bottom line and little else.
In his usual way, O’Brien eviscerates the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, the latter of which he believes will soon become very bored as a back-bencher MP and perhaps finally relieve us of his political presence. He speaks of an odd sympathy for Dominic Cummings, who endeared himself slightly by building a bunker in his father’s garden where he spent two years reading so he could “understand the world”. Blame is not reserved only for right-wing institutions: O’Brien believes Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t get nearly enough flack for the current state of the UK, nor does he think the BBC’s insistence on ‘all sides’ reporting to be useful in today’s climate of ‘untruths’. As an example, he recalls a time when, hosting Newsnight, the BBC happily booked a former director of the World Trade Organization under the proviso that someone was also booked to explain “the other side”. Baffled, O’Brien asked if he was expected to speak to an expert about the ins and outs of the World Trade Organization and its effects on current events, only to turn to someone else and say “you disagree?” “Yeah,” said the BBC with an implied shrug. O’Brien’s book starts with a quote from Noam Chomsky, whose ideas on the subject of manufactured consent feel particularly applicable in moments such as these.
O’Brien’s book lacks the personality of his previous two, How to Be Right and How to Not Be Wrong. How They Broke Britain, while informative, at times feels like an inflated listicle. It lacks what makes O’Brien compelling, and this is never more evident than when he stops talking to Robertson and starts taking audience questions. This is where he is at his best, and if his own belief of his job “being to change minds” is to be considered, his most important. The audience at times asks long rhetorical questions, seemingly only looking to him for validation or understanding. He responds to them with warmth, even in disagreement. His last question was from a woman who has been in a wheelchair since birth, who spoke of her concerns about the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves. Reeves was recently quoted as saying that the Labour Party doesn’t “want to be seen, and we’re not, [as] the party to represent those who are out of work”, alienating and angering those who cannot work for reasons outside their control. O’Brien acknowledged he had no answers for her, but said “when I have Rachel Reeves in my studio, I will think first of you.”
I am as ever a bit nervous in large rooms full of people who agree with each other, listening to someone they agree with, clapping over something with which they wholeheartedly agree. It makes me think of other rooms full of people doing the same thing, for the exact opposite agreements. O’Brien, for his sins, has at least shown he is capable of changing his mind when presented with evidence. His parting words are not his own, but rather those of Orwell, and perhaps the most important of the afternoon: “If you cling to the truth, even against the whole world, you are not mad”. They were words for Orwell’s times, and as O’Brien’s book proves, words for ours as well.
Erin Murray Quinlan is an American playwright, amateur beekeeper, and proud confirmed solver of ‘Cain’s Jawbone’. Her full biography can be found at erinmurrayquinlan.com.
