Robert Peston

I mean, it's easy to blame political actors, but I do think, as I say, this new type of politics that we're seeing, I think it's sort of boiling our brains.

Politically interested people, there are more politically interested people now, I think, than there were 10 years ago.

As someone who thinks politics really matters, I think that's a really good thing, and I'm glad of that.

But I think it's also true to say that, and we've talked a little bit about this before in terms of the fact it's become harder to do journalism

in the age that we're living in.

I think the number of people who are politically interested and willing to have their views and assumptions challenged is becoming slenderer and slenderer by the year.

Because again, what algorithmic politics does is that there is never any reward for stepping outside your tribe, right?

There's never any reward.

If, I mean, I sort of go back a little bit to that conversation we had

And I did that documentary about Keir Starmer with Channel 4, you know, and the sort of fury from some people that we talked about at that time who were almost like, Lewis, we think of you as sort of being on the left.

Like, why are you going for Keir Starmer?

It's like, yeah, but like, you know, it's got to be possible.

It's got to be possible.

Journalism requires a kind of base layer where you are able to say, look, I know you think this.

But have you ever thought about thinking this?

And the problem with the way that online life works is that the thing that is rewarded each and every time for you as a journalist or as a politician is to be telling the people who follow you exactly what they expect to hear from you.

And in a way, if you go back, John, I suppose when you start your career, or even like when I first started getting interested in politics, in terms of like opinion formers and journalism, in a way, the reward was to be slightly different, right?

If you had a column, say, or let's say podcasts existed at that time,

the chances are the thing that you would be rewarded for is sometimes being a bit counterintuitive or a bit iconoclastic is you're sort of reading a column or an opinion for me and say, oh, I wouldn't expect them to think that because if you're saying the same thing over and over again each and every week, then actually that's quite boring and your readers don't want that and your editors don't want that and you want to surprise and regale and actually sort of say or tell your readers something surprising or have a scoop or a report that's surprising or cuts against the grain.

Online life, online political life, journalistic life is exactly the opposite of that.