8. Culture & Politics - “How They Broke Britain”

Having the privilege of more time now to pursue things of interest, attending a greater range of cultural events was high up on my list. Cultural events could of course take many forms, and pairing this with my political interests was a dream! So was extremely excited to see the newly announced book tour of James O’Brien “How they broke Britain “ Being a huge fan of James OB, and catching up with his daily phone in radio show as much as I can, I was really keen to actually hear him interviewed live and hear more of his thoughts on our current political chaos.

For anyone unfamiliar with James OB, he is (now) a rather centre / left journalist / broadcaster, with a social conscience, who hosts an extremely popular radio phone in show on LBC 5 mornings a week - and quite entertainingly, he seems to have the biggest brain of anyone I have ever come across 🤣 By that I really mean his immense ability to hold, remember and string together facts and diverse pieces of information, present a coherent and well thought out argument, and be able to respond to counter arguments with more facts and historical snippets of information, all in a meaningful way! 🤣

So his current book features chapters devoted to different media personalities, politicians, and right wing influencers whom he argues are primarily responsible for the recent demise of Britain, and the current chaotic political system that we find ourselves in, e.g Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre, Jeremy Corbin, Boris Johnson, among others  - with his number one culprit being David Cameron 🤣 It’s a great read, full of facts, conversation transcripts, but far too much information for me to remember and pass on  - I definitely recommend giving it a read 👍😃

Sadly the book tour wasn’t coming to Sheffield, so in November we hopped onto the train and headed over to Manchester for the evening. Despite the event organisers being annoyingly chaotic, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Although I recognised so much of what he talked about from listening to him on the radio, it felt so inspiring and hopeful to be in a room surrounded by loads of like minded people, and listening to someone with seemingly a degree of influence and power challenging the current right wing political discourse 😃 His basic argument within the book is how a political ecosystem has developed in the UK in recent years which has allowed a number of right wing, power hungry individuals to emerge, thrive, and, through his eyes, essentially break  whole social, economic and political structures of Britain. The book doesn’t offer any thoughts on how to fix things, but just knowing that this position is getting widely promoted and talked about offers me some hope for change in the future 🤞🤞🤞

So you can imagine my delight when I saw that James was subsequently coming to Sheffield in May, as part of the annual Sheffield Festival of Debate  - I was really keen to attend again, in order to get my top up dose of political positivity and hope! Sadly Dave wasn’t keen on a rerun 😢 But, imagine my delight when out of the blue my good friend Sarah Ross contacted me to say she had  a spare ticket for the event (Richard was away), and would I like to accompany her? So off I went again, and I actually think it was even better than before! 🤣 So yet again, I found it a really positive and entertaining evening, obviously within the company of like minded people, all giving voice to a shared understanding of factors which have contributed to what James would describe as “broken Britain” , as well as a shared hope for positive future change 😃

I definitely recommend his book - extremely skilled and insightful 😃