20150923_RT
Source: YouTube, RT
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dul72fxC4pc
Date: 23/09/2015
Event: RT interviews political journalist Isabel Oakeshott
Credit: RT
People:
- Isabel Oakeshott: Political journalist and commentator
Interviewer: All right, Isabel Oakeshott, thanks for coming in, today. Now, many of these revelations today, as well as those from yesterday, seem to sort of portray Cameron as this insubstantial figure, saying that his foreign policy's just made up on the hoof, Margaret Thatcher called him "shallow" - um, how often did you encounter that view, when you were researching this book?
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, what people are basing their judgements on, at the moment, is the serialisation of the book in the Daily Mail. Now the Mail has done a fantastic job for us - we've got no complaints whatsoever about the scale of publicity we've had, but of course a serialisation only presents a small taster of the book, and in fact when people read Call Me Dave, the full book creates quite a different impression of David Cameron, a more rounded picture of him. And we're certainly not portraying him as a complete lightweight - I think that would be entirely unfair. I think what is fair to say, from the extents of research that we did, in a number of different countries, is that there are other figures on the foreign policy stage, on the international stage, who are regarded with greater respect than David Cameron, for example, in particular, Angela Merkel.
Interviewer: We'll come back to this serialisation that the Daily Mail's doing, but there are reports that the Prime Minister has called these allegations "ridiculous", but only in private. Why do you think he hasn't come out and denied them in public?
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, if I were a spin doctor in Downing Street, I would have taken exactly the same approach. Of course, there is one explanation which is possibly that they're true. I assume that you're referring to allegations of student high jinks, that kind of thing. Um, but if I were Downing Street and dealing with a book of this nature, I think the best approach for them is to stand back from it and not get into a, kind of, "Well, this is true, this isn't true, well this a bit true but we don't like the way it's presented..."
Interviewer: And just hope it goes away, eventually.
Isabel Oakeshott: They're much better to stand back from it - I can't blame them for that.
Interviewer: Okay, um, you've said that this book could have been published ahead of the General Election -
Isabel Oakeshott: Indeed.
Interviewer: - um, was there a miscalculation here? I mean, were you planning a kind of political obituary, in the event that Cameron wasn't re-elected?
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, nobody knew whether Cameron would be re-elected or not. The book was commissioned a long time ago - myself and my co-author Lord Ashcroft had been working on it for well over 18 months, and we didn't know, at that point, of course, whether the Conservatives were going to win or not. Now, virtually every political commentator in the land was predicting either a hung Parliament or doom for the Tories, so I don't think that anyone would deny that there was a widespread expectation that Cameron was not still going to be leading a majority government, or even necessarily a coalition. But I don't think that would have changed any way that we approached the book.
Interviewer: You've said that the book presents a well-rounded picture of David Cameron. Is there anything positive in there?
Isabel Oakeshott: My goodness, there is so much positive stuff about the Prime Minister in there. I'm really hoping that he can bear to still read it when it comes out, because -
Interviewer: Do you think he will?
Isabel Oakeshott: - well, I hope the people around him read it, because actually the book bears almost no relation in tone to the coverage in the Mail. Now that is not because the Mail has done anything wrong, it's because newspaper serialisations necessarily go for the juiciest stuff.
Interviewer: So how can you, then, be happy with this serialisation, if it's only gone for the negative - it's gone directly for the jugular, hasn't it?
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, look, no author is going to complain about the level of publicity - we want this book to be read, the Daily Mail has done an amazing job getting it out there, and that's Step 1 - Step 2 is for people to say "I recognise this from the Daily Mail - let's pick it up and read it as a whole".
Interviewer: Are you happy, then, that they led with "#PigGate"?
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, look, it would be disingenuous of me to say that I'm delighted that "#PigGate" has had the prominence it's had, but let's be fair, here, on the Daily Mail and be accurate about the way we're representing this - they did not lead with "#PigGate", social media led with "#PigGate".
Interviewer: But they must have known that it would be picked up so heavily, and it was, on the first day of serialisation.
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, I'm not here to speak for the way they chose to present the stories, but we're very happy with the way that they have carried out the serialisation.
Interviewer: Um, former Political Editor of the News of the World Ian Kirby says this story, the one about the pig, would have been thrown out by tabloid editors if it had been presented to them, because there simply wasn't enough proof. What does that say about the standard of journalism that you employed?
Isabel Oakeshott: Well, I know Ian Kirby well, he used to work for the News of the World - that's not a paper that can really - well, it doesn't exist any more, so Ian can't really take any moral high ground, here. Of course, papers wouldn't have run this as a factual story, but neither did we. We ran this as a small anecdote that might or might not be true - now, that's what I do, I'm a reporter, and where I'm not sure whether something is the case or not, I'm upfront about it, and that's what I was.
Interviewer: Okay, you've taken a lot of flak since the serialisation -
Isabel Oakeshott: Guess what, I'm used to it - I'm a reporter, I break stories -
Interviewer: - do you regret, though, do you regret it? Do you regret any of the editorial decisions that you've made?
Isabel Oakeshott: I don't - look, I put myself out there. I dish it out, I'll take it and no worries, I ought to be big enough for that. And if I'm going to be giving the Prime Minister a bit of flak, I'll take some in return.
Interviewer: All right, Isabel Oakeshott, thank you very much for coming in today.
Isabel Oakeshott: Great.