Nick Clegg: I’ve launched a podcast – and my first guest is Nigel Farage Boris Johnson used to have one. So did Sadiq Khan. Harriet Harman had a turn too. Nigel Farage does his […]

Boris Johnson used to have one. So did Sadiq Khan. Harriet Harman had a turn too. Nigel Farage does his four times a week. In fact, you can hardly pick up a phone these days without a politician answering. Like knocking on doors or holding a constituency surgery, hosting a radio phone-in has become just another way to speak directly to the voters.

Yet it was uncharted territory when my show, Call Clegg, launched on LBC back in January 2013. Not surprisingly, the idea won a string of negative reviews before I had even arrived for my first half hour in the studio.

What I learned during the podcast is that an identifiable, and largely unaccountable, Brexit Elite is now firmly in charge The i politics newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

Conservative MP Peter Bone described the concept of a politician taking calls from the public on air as “bizarre”, while Labour MP John Mann said that the show proved how “irrelevant” I had become. Even my own party colleagues weren’t convinced, with one helpful Liberal Democrat source telling the Evening Standard that the idea of Call Clegg sounded “a bit desperate.” The gleeful predictions of disaster were both a rare outbreak of cross-party agreement and another example of Westminster’s innate conservatism.

Real conversations, not all of them pleasant, with real people, not all of whom like you, lie at the heart of politics, and Call Clegg gave me a chance to cut through the relentless duties of being the deputy prime minister and speak directly to the LBC audience. It was a refreshing change from traditional political interviews, where I was hardly likely to be asked if I owned a green onesie – as my LBC co-presenter Nick Ferrari cheekily enquired on my debut appearance. I did, as a matter of fact.

So was Call Clegg a success? The result of the 2015 general election might suggest not, but if I focus on the award nominations, the positive reviews – even the Daily Telegraph described the show as a “national political landmark” – and the cast-list of politicians who have replicated the format, then it would appear that the idea was not as outlandish as many first thought.

Pod-appeal

Four years on, it’s now my turn to follow an increasingly well-trodden route. These days politicians don’t need to secure a slot in the running order, let alone sit next to Nick Ferrari for half an hour, in exchange for their own show. Instead they just record their own podcasts. Ed Miliband co-hosts ‘Reasons to be cheerful’, Nigel Farage presents ‘Farage Against the Machine’, and even Jacob Rees-Mogg has embraced the digital age with his own ‘Moggcast’.

I freely admit that I haven’t downloaded any of them, but then that’s part of the podcast appeal. People’s listening habits are changing. They want to choose what they listen to and when, seeking out podcasts which challenge, entertain or reassure. For many, when the news cycle is so relentlessly grim, people also want to give their ears something more soothing, educative, and positive, to tune into. Brexit is a case in point.

What was most surprising to me was how very ‘establishment’ Nigel Farage sounds these days

The upbeat cheeriness of the BBC’s Brexitcast is proving to be a popular antidote to the joyless coverage of the Brexit negotiations, while Remainiacs has created a welcome, if shamelessly partial, home for those who would prefer us to stay in the EU. The same is true in the US, where four former aides to President Obama present Pod Save America and provide some solace from the fire and fury of Donald Trump.

Listening figures are continually rising, with improved technology, and the increased choice on offer, pushing podcasts – which first emerged over a decade ago – further into the mainstream. In the ultimate sign of establishment endorsement, even the BBC has recently appointed its own head of podcast commissioning.

It’s an increasingly crowded field. So what will be different about my new podcast, Anger Management With Nick Clegg?

In the chair

I will be in the interviewer’s chair, the first former deputy prime minister to host a podcast, but having endured plenty of ill-tempered exchanges with the likes of John Humphreys or Jeremy Paxman, I have grown to abhor the tired and tested confrontational interview format. On this podcast series there is no wish to pounce on a slip of the tongue or endure a soundbite being hammered home.

It will be free of party allegiances and ecumenical in its choice of guests. Because this podcast is all about anger – and the politics of anger has engulfed all parties and none. Over the next few months I’m going to talk to major guests from across the political and cultural landscape and ask them why our world has become so driven by anger. At the heart of the series will be a simple question in urgent need of an answer: If rage is the opposite of reason, how do we get reason back on top?

No doubt many of my guests will share many of my views, but this podcast won’t just be a salon for anguished centrists and distraught pro-Europeans. That’s why my first guest was Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader who, let’s admit it, bested me – twice – in our previous encounters in the TV debates in 2014.

When the news cycle is so relentlessly grim, people also want to give their ears something more soothing, educative, and positive, to tune into

This time, exchanging our podiums and posturing for a cup of tea and a table in a basement Soho studio, the encounter was rather different – and actually far more enlightening.

Other than revealing that he can envisage circumstances in which a people’s vote on the final deal would be justified, and being open about his children’s dual German-British citizenship (my Anglo-Spanish children are in the same position), what was perhaps most surprising to me was how very “establishment” Nigel Farage sounds these days: he expressed real annoyance that he has not been asked by Theresa May to work on behalf of the Government in Washington, and is perplexed that young people overwhelmingly voted Remain, declaring loftily that “they will change their minds”.

Farage bristled at the suggestion, but what I learned during the podcast is that an identifiable, and largely unaccountable, Brexit elite is now firmly in charge. The livid anger of Paul Dacre, the loopy schemes of Dominic Cummings, the opaque funding and campaign practices of the anti European campaign groups, Farage himself – none of them take any responsibility for what is happening to our country, but their splenetic prejudices are now ascendant.

That is something worth understanding, and discussing, in many podcasts to come.

You can listen to ‘Anger Management with Nick Clegg’ here

@nick_clegg