Newsnight – a footnote

Posted on August 2 2019

I feel I have to post this, and do so as explanation with a little reluctance.

On Wednesday night, after being told no one was available to debate with me on Newsnight I posted this fact on Twitter because having previously tweeted that I would be on air I felt I had to explain why that would not be happening. The tweet got a lot of reaction - it has been retweeted thousands of times.

This was Emily Maitlis' reaction:

This was my response to that:

Rapidly followed by this

And this:

These last two points are very important. When I wrote about the cancellation on  Wednesday evening I said:

[T]hey said Laffer had pulled out. No reason had been given.

'They' does refer to the BBC. And I told the truth. By the time I wrote I had had two conversations on the issue with a producer and an email from her. No emergency was mentioned. And I admit I was rather led to believe something different. Maybe that was not true. But that is what I think I was led to believe.

What is true is that I had no idea that there was a family emergency. I happen to have met Arthur Laffer. I do not agree with him on much, but it has not stopped me sharing his company, and I readily admit that if I had known that there was such an emergency I would not have commented as I did. I would have wished him well. I do so now. But I did not know that.

In that case I greatly resent Emily Maitlis' tweet. She has accused me of distorting things when I did not. I had not been told information that she was in possession of. Her accusation was, then, wrong. There is no other way of putting it.

It's annoying enough to be cancelled by the BBC when already waiting to go on. To then be abused after not being told why is not, I think acceptable. I have made that clear to the BBC.

On a more lighthearted level, my blog on what I might have said was read well over 10,000 times yesterday. And I passed 50,000 twitter followers as a result. There are always upsides.

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5 Responses

  1. Pilgrim Slight Return says:
    August 2 2019 at 7:41 am

    Proof again that in these twisted times, the BBC needs to watch its P’s and Q’s.

    My view – Richard should have gone on and had the floor to himself on Newsnight like rancid fat-boy Bannon whom I cannot stand to look at let alone listen to.

    Sorry if that sounds a little too personal but I mean look at Bannon – his flesh is rotting because of the filth in his brain. He’s nothing but the corpse of bad, failed ideas.

  2. Steve Francis says:
    August 2 2019 at 10:51 am

    I think your suggestion that Arthur Laffer ‘chickened out’ because he feared you was graceless and uninformed. It was a cheap shot.

    This is what Emily is rightly annoyed about.

  3. Paul O says:
    August 2 2019 at 11:05 am

    Rather than an apology, a platform – i.e. a Newsnight interview – to express your ideas/views seems like a suitable response.

    I share your observation about a potential bias on how they feel the need to balance. I think we see it in the climate debate also.

  4. Roy S Grey says:
    August 2 2019 at 11:28 am

    Is Ms Maitlis not known to be a Conservative supporter anyway?

    My experience of being on the receiving end of excuses is that if they are genuinely serious you get the unvarnished truth straight away. Saying no more…