7. Kevin Maguire

Called everything from a communist to a right-wing capitalist

Hello and welcome to What’s Left? where I chat with someone from somewhere on the left each week. Today, it occurred to me for the first time that we are now one-quarter of the way through this century. I’m sure you’ll have already figured that out, but it really shocked me. Remember when Y2K alarmists were predicting mad stuff happening with computers at the turn of the century? Those chumps had truly no clue how bad things would actually get!

But listen, my New Year’s resolution was to practice optimism. So instead of wanging on about Musk and Zuckerberg, I’m going to conclude that absolutely everything will massively and permanently improve in 2025. And on that positive note, let’s meet this week’s guest…

This week I’m talking to Kevin Maguire who is a political journalist, the associate editor of the Daily Mirror and a columnist for the New Statesman. Kevin is also a political commentator on Sky News and ITV, a newspaper reviewer and a visiting professor at the University of Sunderland. Previously, he was chief reporter for The Guardian. Kevin was my dad’s friend and is my friend’s dad, which sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Hello Kevin and welcome to What’s Left? Now if you could imagine the political spectrum with zero being centrist, -100 fascist and +100 as left-wing as you can get, where would you put yourself?

Well, other people have called me everything from a communist to a right-wing capitalist, though never a fascist, I'm glad to say. I'm certainly on the left. I'd be more than 50% on that scale, maybe, 75 or 80. I know that puts people off at parties.

Please tell me more about putting people off at parties.

I normally try to avoid ramming my politics down anybody's throat, but you’d be amazed at the number of people and ram their politics down mine. Just assuming I’ll agree with whatever they declare, even though I often don't. If I'm feeling good, I'll try and accommodate them but other times I'll just say, ‘Oh, that's absolute bollocks,’ and then go straight for it. In general, I do think it’s better to try and be persuasive rather than just hammering people. It just depends on how you feel sometimes. And if you’re at a party, it also depends on how much you’ve had to drink.

Sounds like someone had an eventual festive period. So when do you think you started becoming left-wing?

I grew up in a working-class household in the northeast of England. My dad was a coal miner and my mum worked in a biscuit factory and was a cleaner. No need to get out a tiny violin, but I knew the jobs they did were hard and weren't particularly well rewarded. And I saw other people seemed to have a better crack of the whip. I think my politics was rooted in experience, you could call it ‘lived’. It wasn’t from books anyway, we didn’t even have books.

Sorry, but I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.

No, we really didn’t. We didn't even have writing paperwork. We had to write my homework answers on a Kleenex tissue. It was back in the days when you weren't given books at school, so we didn’t have any.

Oh wow, Kevin. Sorry, this is so patronizing, but you’ve come very far.

Some people do get lucky.

I don’t know if you can get that lucky without a lot of hard work and talent too.

No, that’s what exactly happens. The system is very good at always taking some people forward and keeping everybody else down. Capitalism tends to go to inequality. But it realises it's got to pull up some people from the working class to give the impression of being a more meritocratic system than it actually is.

Anyway, some people just get lucky. And I got, I got lucky.

I agree with you and I also think you’re being a little self-denigrating at the same time.

I got lucky and I'm quite happy to be lucky.

But going back to where my politics came from, it was just growing up and seeing everything and thinking, ‘Hang on, we can surely build a better community, a better country, a better world.’

I didn't come across people with ideologies or even learn about ideologies until I went to York University and did politics. And there were some people there who'd been reading Marx and Engels from the age of four which is how they got to where they were. Good for them. But my views came from experience and then they were reinforced throughout life. I’m still always instinctively on the side of the underdog.

If your views have been reinforced, would you say they’ve changed much over the years?

I wouldn't say they’ve shifted much, though there are some issues I’ve changed on. I'd have once said that Britain shouldn't be in NATO because it's a nuclear organization. I'm still a unilateralist, but I think I've probably changed my position on our membership to NATO. And then other issues come to the fore, like climate change.

I feel like a lot of us live in our little echo chamber, and I admit I’m hardly helping with such a specific newsletter. As a political journalist, do you feel like you are more frequently talking to people with different views?

More than average, yeah. I mean — the shame of it — I've got friends who voted Conservative, some who even voted for Brexit.

Shock horror.

I know, it was very testing. But you have to try and work out why they think that and then you try and persuade them otherwise. Often with little success, it has to be said. But we’ve all got to rub along.

Though there are some things I couldn’t tolerate. Out and out racism, for instance. Or it'd be very hard to be friends with somebody really homophobic. But if you're arguing about the benefit system and the rights and wrongs of the two-child benefit cap, that's a bit different.

Few more shades of grey.

Yeah. Not everyone who votes Conservative or for Reform UK are bad people. I just think they’re wrong. It's about how you bring them in, how you cajole them.

You told me once that you get attacked quite a lot online for your views, and that you responded by muting people fiercely.

I normally mute rather than block because I quite like the idea that they're just running in a vacuum and wasting their time.

That does sound satisfying. Ok, this is a hard question, would you be able to summarize your views in a sentence?

I'm a democratic socialist. So I believe in democracy and that we also need significant public and social ownership and strong trade unions. In terms of values, of course, I’m imperfect like everybody else, but I’d just like to see the world fairer and more decent. I don't want to sound like a bishop at a pulpit, but my mantra would be, ‘Have a good time, do a bit of good and minimize the harm.’

I don’t think anyone can argue with that.

Well, there we are. Bishop it is then.

Straight to the top of the church, why not? So what do you think of the Labour Party at the moment?

Well Labour and Kier Starmer got off to a very bumpy start. More incompetent than I expected, especially with the winter fuel allowance. I was quite excited about rail re-nationalization and employment and trade union rights. Those I applaud. But it wasn't a particularly radical socialist programme.

But with any government, you have to look at the good parts and the bad parts and then compare them with the alternatives. If you were to go back to just before the election when the Conservatives were still in power, I think the country is in a better position now, sort of zigzagging forward.

And if you had a message for the bigwigs at the top of the party, what would it be?

Be courageous and bold and stop being frightened of your shadows. You want to transform Britain? Transform it then, make a much better country. You got a huge Commons majority, so stop shilly-shallying and accommodating your opponents. Absolutely just go for it, now.

Do you have any confidence that they can do that?

I think that Britain will be better at the end of the Labour government than it was at the beginning. But will I be disappointed? Yes, I will be disappointed. I can feel that and see that already now.

So how much optimism do you have for the future? I understand that’s quite a bleak and also leading question.

As somebody on the left, you've got to be optimistic. It's felt as if life has been getting tougher rather than easier for people in Britain, but I do have some optimism and I think we must never give up hope. It looks pretty grim on the on the global stage with Trump in the U.S. and with Putin in Ukraine and the UK outside the European Union. You look at the amount of wars and poverty and real terrible damage from climate change. But you have to never give up, otherwise the people who win are like Elon Musk.

So yes, I do have some optimism. But sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel looks like a pinprick, or you fear it's an on-rushing train.

Ha, ok, so mixed bag there. Thinking back more now, could you name a time in politics during your lifetime when you felt the most elated?

I remember feeling elation in 1997 when the Conservatives were voted out after 18 years. Although again, I knew was going to be disappointed. And there were many things that that Labour government did wrong, including the Iraq war.

Oh, sure.

But also, I grew up in the 1970s. They get a bad rap now: it's always said to be a terrible period, ending in the winter of discontent and so on. But working people did have a sense of hope and achievement and Britain was at its fairest in the mid-70s, really. There were a large number of strikes, but there were strikes because people had the confidence to fight back. So I'm fascinated by the 1970s. I'd quite happily go back to them, really. If had a Tardis.

Good music then too.

Yeah. But also lots of pollution because we were burning all that coal.

When during your lifetime can you remember feeling most depressed about politics?

That would have been in the 1980s, during the Thatcher period.

And were you more depressed about politics in the 1980s than you are now?

I think so. In 1983, she got that huge majority and then there was a year-long miners’ strike. My dad was out of the industry then, but my brother David was involved. It was just terrible. Britain turned into a police state and we had all the privatizations. Communities were being absolutely hammered in the North Midlands, South Wales, Scotland and parts of South East London too. They got things like Hillsborough [devastating and fatal crowd crush at a football match] where working-class people were seen as the enemy. I thought that was a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful period. The people who backed Thatcher stuffed their mouths with gold and sold off industries on the cheap, slashing their taxes. And life was pretty grim for so many other people. The greed wasn't good, it was all pretty awful.

It's interesting that my reaction to hearing you say that was a mix of sadness and relief. I suppose I usually expect people to say that the political climate is at its worst right now and it’s weirdly comforting to hear someone say the worst might be behind us.

I'm not doing cartwheels and handstands about everything in life now, but I do think it is better than it was back then. My hope is a bit brighter at the moment.

And you need perspective. Often you get people discussing football and whoever's playing for their team at that moment is the ‘best ever’ or ‘worst ever’ when that’s not actually the case, they just don’t have perspective. God, I sound like an old bloke. Although I suppose I am getting to become an old bloke. And getting older does help with perspective.

Something to look forward to then. Kevin, I have a few quick questions if you have time.

These are the ones where I get myself into trouble.

I would genuinely love that. Can you name a politician who you admire?

In the UK, I hugely admire Dennis Skinner, ‘The Beast of Bolsover’. He won't be famous internationally, but he was a Labour MP for 49 years, a coal miner, one of nine kids born in poverty. But he was just incredibly principled and really, really clever. And then looking globally, it's always Nelson Mandela. I was in the presence of several times, though I never I met him properly. There was something about the lack of bitterness after he'd been imprisoned for so long that was really, really impressive.

Great answer, something for everyone in there. Okay, this is a cheeky question that I definitely would not ask you outside the newsletter. Have you ever dated or slept with a conservative?

Oh, almost certainly back in the day. I'm sorry. Politics always didn't always come first, he says sheepishly. God, I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I'm going to go straight to a monastery and never, never come out.

Cleanse yourself.

Oh, I will.

Are there any left-wing books that you’d recommend readers?

Right now in front of me, I’ve got a copy of ‘Ernest Bevan’ by Andrew Adonis. Ernie Bevan was an incredible bull. He founded the Transport General Workers Union, which was a big trade union in its day, and he was the Foreign Secretary after the Second World War. I wouldn't have agreed with him on nuclear weapons, but he was an illegitimate child born in absolute poverty and he rose to the top in politics. That was a great tribute to the Labour movement that helped shape him and he shaped it.

I’ll definitely check that out, I’m ashamed to admit I’d not even heard of him. Ok, last question is whether you have any recommendations for action.

Find a group of like-minded people near where you live and meet them down the pub to talk about politics. Just talk and see where it leads and avoid being online all the time. There's a great advantage to the Internet and it's a wonderful development, but it can also in a curious way isolate us.

I love that idea which is also a refreshing change from hearing people talk about Dry January. I hope everyone reading is now inspired to go straight to the pub. Thank you so much for talking to me Kevin!

You can find Kevin on Twitter/X and his work in The Mirror and The New Statesman. Also, if you are UK-based and have a TV, turn it on at any given time and there is a 90% chance you will see him onscreen talking passionately and eloquently about politics. I hope you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did!

Also, do get yourselves ready for more episodes of my satirical comedy podcast, FeMAnism coming out soon. Samantha Martin and I play two men explaining feminism, and it is somehow even sillier than it sounds.