Are Labour's attack ads 'gutter politics'?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Labour’s Easter weekend attack ads about the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak specifically have been called 'politics of the gutter' by, awkwardly, Labour’s former Home Secretary David Blunkett.
Lewis is joined by Steve Reed, the party’s Shadow Justice Secretary, who was behind the campaign. He, as you’ll hear is entirely unapologetic.
Is this the start of a new period of a more vicious politics?
And NHS surgeons may be about to face their own #MeToo moment, with female surgeons coming forward to say that sexual assault and misogyny within surgery is commonplace.
Lewis talks to Rachel Sylvester, who has written for The Times on the subject and Roshana Mehdian-Staffel, an orthopaedic surgeon who has spoken out about her experiences.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.2 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.1 | If you've spent any time on social media this Easter weekend, |
| 0:16.4 | you probably have seen one of those ads from the Labour Party. |
| 0:20.3 | Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? |
| 0:25.1 | Rishi Sunak doesn't. |
| 0:26.2 | Do you think thieves should be punished? |
| 0:28.6 | Rishi Sunak doesn't. |
| 0:29.8 | Do you think an adult convicted of possessing a gun with intent to harm should go to prison? |
| 0:34.5 | Rishi Sunak doesn't? |
| 0:35.7 | Each one out each day with a beaming Rishi Sunak in the background, |
| 0:39.9 | each one designed to symbolically link Sunak a new Prime Minister |
| 0:44.5 | with a record of a party with a now quite old, deep record in office. |
| 0:49.9 | But it is the style of these ads which has generated heat |
| 0:53.1 | and one in particular saying that Rishi |
| 0:55.6 | Sunak does not believe that child sex abusers should be punished has felt near furnace. |
| 1:01.8 | Grandees, including David Blunkett, the former Labour Home Secretary, no meek practitioner of politics |
| 1:07.7 | himself, has condemned it, saying he couldn't believe that his party would |
| 1:12.1 | stoop to, in his words, the politics of the gutter. So on today's episode of the newsagents, |
| 1:17.9 | we will be asking the question, why? Why is Labor doing this? What are they hoping to achieve? |
| 1:23.8 | What is the risk of blowback? Why, over a sleepy bank holiday weekend, did the gloves |
| 1:30.1 | finally come off? It's Lewis here. Welcome to the newsagents. |
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