F.N. Hello and welcome to Navarro FM. My name is Juliet Jakes and today I am joined by Owen Hathley and Ash Sarkar to talk about British culture and politics in the 2000s.

So taking us back to the new labor era. Ash of course needs no

introduction to regular Navarro-Novara listeners or watchers because she

works here I will say that she did achieve my childhood dream of yelling the words

I'm a communist you idiot at Pierce Morgan on national television something that

has earned her my eternal respect.

Owen Hathley, I'm sure, is also familiar to many of our listeners.

He is a commissioning editor at Jacobin magazine and has published 15 books, incredibly prolific.

So Owen and Ash, welcome to the show.

Hello.

Thanks for having me.

So I'm going to introduce the topic

through an article that was published in Tribune magazine in 2020.

And this caught my eye not just because it's a really good distillation of the relationship

between politics and media in the 2000s, which is of course a decade in which the new

Labour government were in power from beginning pretty much to end.

But because it was written by Jason Ockendai, who I think in the year 2000 may not have started

primary school yet. And I found it really fascinating that someone who wasn't really there at the time could get such a good grasp on

the nature of British like pop culture, quite a lot of things that seem quite ephemeral now.

He opens up by talking about the last Queen's speech before the 2001 general election.

When Tony Blair scolded the cap-wearing 14-point--drinking leader of the opposition William Haig, by telling him that

you are the weakest link goodbye, which was a cringe-worthy reference to the BBC Quiz Show The Weakest Link, which has started in August 2000,

...