Hello and welcome to the political party. Today's guest is David Aranavitch, one of the most gifted writers in the country and presenter of Radio 4's briefing room. He's done so much in his career and we talk about a lot of it, but also just his experience has been in the journalist.

Particularly his experience of being a journalist with center left views effectively what I mean is being someone who was proble at that time working at the Guardian is to make it absolutely clear where this is going.

As well as what the role of journalism is whether we never stand for politics or not for parliament or not, whether there was ever interest in being a politician.

But also what the life of a journalist is and what his life is now and what mediums suit his work. Now he started a sub stack because he's writing is absolutely superb and for me he's the closest thing we've got to Christopher Hitchens and we talk about this and David's as you would expect a huge fan of his two.

But you have to subscribe to his sub stack because the writing is superb. So I've put a link to it that you can click on subscribe. It's David Aranavitch dot sub stack dot com. I'll do that again. It's David Aranavitch dot sub stack dot com.

And he's just and we talk about this as well the difference and where he's effectively writing with a level of freedom he's never had before and whether he prefers that or not but the whole load of things we talk about now just to let you know some of the guests at the future live shows on Monday the 22nd of May.

And I guess is David Blonke that will be the first show back after the local elections that will be absolutely phenomenal with a true labor heavyweight on Monday the 5th of June a very rare interview with the former conservative chancellor Philip Hammond on Monday the 19th of June and even rare ring to view with the first woman to lead the Labor party.

No woman obviously has been elected to lead the Labor Party yet we all wait for the day that happens for the first woman to lead the Labor Party of course after John Smith sad passing was Margaret Beckett also stood in the 1994 leadership election on Monday the 3rd of July.

My guest is the phenomenal comedian Joe Lysit who of course you have seen from not just his wonderful work on telly but a lot of his activism as well and we've got some other guest to book in the intervening months but just to let you know on the 2nd of October.

Again I just want to try and broaden the net a bit and get as well as politicians and broadcasters and people who are interested in politics and vocal about it and very excited on the 2nd of October my guest is the lead singer of the sleep at mods Jason Williamson who is really into his politics is very vocal whose lyrics are inherently satirical and very I mean the new album UK grim is not only very funny and great music.

It's also a real piss take of the country in the state were in so and the people in charge so that will be something really different there's such a great outfit the sleep with mods so to have Jason on is going to be real privilege and but on to today's guest who is I mean talking of a privilege to interview David a ran of it obviously someone who I've been a fan of for just such a long time and we talk about why.

I guess people like here and I who consider ourselves to be of the center ground and that to be where the majority view of Britain is or that's where at least where people are I guess prepared to vote for parties that appeal there and why in the last few years or certainly in the Corbyn Johnson era there wasn't really a major now of course that there was the lid Dems I accept that but why the 2 major parties didn't go there and why we have.

So I think that's what I think is the most important thing to do is to take to these are politically made to look in a way kind of remote from the mainstream even though and that's where the way to opinion is out the country anyway anyway I will stop rattling on because David is far superior talker to me and well let's enjoy the interview with the phenomenal David a run of it.

As you'll know that we were we've just passed the 26 year anniversary of new labor coming to power on the first of May 1997 which means it is the 16 year anniversary of your fantastic documentary the Blair years and have you reflected on that documentary series at all in in the last few days.

Not as it's 16 years.

Do you mean the one I did once I did with Blair yeah was that 16 years ago 2007 2007 yeah to that yeah it was really.

Do you know you know this perfectly well which is that time exists in different kind of dimensions so for example if I tell you when they you know what was the number one one year at one year and say is this the same year or a different year to this movie you won't get it right.

It's you'll think they're 10 years out and so on so we kind of exist on different sort of timelines really different kind of bits of us.

I'm I'm affected a lot I mean not least because this year was also the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion and that involved me.

One of the problems about journalists like me is we take ourselves seriously so we think it actually matters what we say or is we have to kind of treat it like it matters what we say so.

Deciding shortly after I've gone to the Guardian actually from the independent that I was going to be one of the people who said yeah I want to see sedan taken out really.

I'm taken down and that being I think probably in many ways the most.

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