Don’t believe the headlines

I suppose it was a bit naive to wander on to Newsnight having been booked to talk about Brexit and my new book and expect to talk about Brexit and my new book. I should have expected instead to be shrieked at about ‘racism’ by a fishwife on acid, which is what happened. In the usual calm, measured and unpartisan manner, Emily Maitlis suggested that I spewed bile each week for the Murdoch press. I might have pointed out that at least people voluntarily fork out their couple of quid to immerse themselves in that bile, rather than as in her case being involuntarily taxed to pay for her inflated salary, a reward for lousing up prime ministerial debates and reading an autocue in a bien pensant manner to a pygmy audience. Everything, for Emily, is racist, as it is for the vast majority of the BBC.

I was meant to be debating the issue with director of communications for the People’s Vote campaign, Tom Baldwin — but even he couldn’t get a word in edgeways. I asked Mr Baldwin afterwards if he had read the book we were meant to be discussing and he said he’d read quite a bit of it, on the Tube, which is wholly commendable. However he did add that he had removed the cover from the book so that people didn’t see him reading something written by me. ‘You’re a pariah in north London, you know,’ he said, laughing. Good. Long may that remain. And so — onwards with the bile, ever more bile, bile so vividly green Caroline Lucas would vote for it. The next 700 words are all racist bile, if you’re Maitlis. If you’re not Maitlis I think you’ll be able to cope.

A report out last week gave rise to a succession of news reports about endemic racism within the workplace, regarding earnings.