The infuriatingly smug complacency of The News Agents

Every time the deportation discourse flares up again, as it is right now, I’m afraid I catch myself thinking, ‘Well, hang on, Mr Farage / Lowe / Jenrick / whoever. You say that you’ll deport 600,000 illegal immigrants, yes. But we’d still be left with the thousands of people who listen to The News Agents?’

This current-affairs podcast, for those of you blissfully unaware, is the product of three journalists formerly employed by the BBC. Now there are some naughty people out there who think that the Beeb – despite its statutory requirement of impartiality – is stuffed to the gills with pusillanimous progressives of the extreme ‘sensible’ centre. But this lazy assumption was blown to smithereens when, freed from the shackles of Ofcom, the three News Agents hosts revealed themselves to be fascinatingly original and unpredictable thinkers across every hot topic.

Not really! They turned out to be exactly what everybody always knew they were, espousers of the correct views on anything and everything. The Nice, Good, Sensible people saying Nice, Good, Sensible things.

But who are the three heads of this centrist Cerberus?

Leading the pack is Emily Maitlis, ex-Newsnight, who has brought with her from her long years at the BBC her customary manner as a host: halfway between chewing a wasp and calling one’s attention to what the cat has dragged in. The boy wonder to Emily’s Batman is Lewis Goodall, formerly of Sky News and also of Newsnight, who specialises in winding people up in a pass-agg, Louis Theroux-style ‘just asking questions’ way, needling them into snapping – so that he can then raise an arch eyebrow when they do. Bringing up the rear is Alfred, the butler – Jon Sopel, an amiable old buffer, also ex-BBC, who gives the impression that he’s wandered in through the wrong door at night school and is about to say, ‘Oh, I thought this was model railways’.

The News Agents is sensibleness cubed. Calm down, don’t be silly. Guys, guys, let’s dial down the rhetoric, okay? It appeals to the sort of people who are basically fine with any outrage, just so long as nobody makes a scene. Actually, no, making a scene is fine, but it has to be the right type of scene, done with good manners.

As Britain sinks daily under the centrist-sludge administration that these people longed for, their complacency looks ever more ludicrous. A recent event captures this in microcosm.

Lewis Goodall also has a slot on LBC, where the other day he had one of those appropriately centrist scenes, pushing back against the angry reaction to mooted increases to inheritance tax. ‘What we have in this country is an aristocracy of wealth!’, he spluttered, mistaking 2025 for 1925. Still, only a hundred years out. (Goodall is himself the council-estate kid of a teen mother, making this claim self-evidently ridiculous.) ‘I wouldn’t be opposed to a 100 per cent inheritance tax!’, he rambled on, like an 18-year-old student at 2am, two spliffs down, at a Freshers’ Week party in halls. But Lewis is twice that age.

To his great surprise, his proposal was very much rejected by the public, many of whom used fruity language to tell him so. This led to another video message, of the ‘Mum, everybody’s picking on me’ variety.

‘It’s perfectly fine if you have a different point of view and I can understand that’, moaned our hero. ‘What I cannot understand, I must say, is… the invective, and the strength of feeling.’

This is Lewis’s trouble all over. Despite his origins, he has spent so long in the company of the progressive middle class that he has gone native. And why not? This is the survival instinct kicking in. He is merely doing what others of his background – say Gary Stevenson or Kathy Burke – have done. Adopting fashionable middle-class views is one of the few remaining avenues for social mobility – that’s where the money is, after all. The progressive semi-posh adore such people – and doors begin to swing wide open for you. The danger with this – and believe me, I know – is that you get marinated and stewed in ‘sensible’ media opinions, and forget how infuriating they are to actual people.

Because yes, Lewis, those who have worked hard and saved to provide for their families are probably going to be a little peeved when some pompous, ageing twink suggests that all of their money and assets should be seized when they die and distributed among people who haven’t bothered.

I fear that this incident, and many others of late, means that the centrist racket is nearing its end, or at least it’s going to get a lot less comfortable. My advice to Lewis – if he can’t hack it – would be to repent and switch sides.

Because I think we are beyond the tolerance point for Sensibleness. We have a Sensible government in Starmer’s Labour, after all, and look how that’s turning out. People are now pissed off enough, and in large enough numbers, to really notice the Sensibles, like The News Agents, who have slipped under their radar for decades. And – Heavens to Betsy, quick nurse, the screens! – they are having the sheer temerity to give them hell for it.

Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter, author and novelist, best known for his work on Doctor Who.