Today: Mishal Husain lets minister dissemble

Mishal Husain

Mike Tomlinson 

I was travelling to Arrochar for some mountain exercise and, as on most days, I was listening to the Today programme. Over the fifty-plus years that I have listened to the programme, there have always been some pairings of presenters who bring the best out of each other and either keep the interviewee honest or provide the listener with evidence that the respondent is evasive, dishonest, patronising and probably not to be trusted. Today was probably the best example of the latter type of interview.

Leaving aside Jack De Manio and his clock, they were never synchronised, the pairings that worked for me in the past were Brian Redhead and John Timpson, Peter Hobday and Sue MacGregor, and John Humphries and James Naughtie. Today, Mishal Hussain and Justin Webb are my favourite pairing. Nick Robinson and Amol Rojan are both good but just a little too full of themselves to extract the best or worst out of their guests. 

Today, we had the announcement that Parliament had finally managed to secure its Rwanda Agreement. Possibly, the worst legislation along with George Osborne's Austerity Measures, HS2 and Boris Johnson's Brexit and COVID catastrophes since this government began its journey to oblivion. Needless to say, the present PM, Rishi Sunk, and his senior ministers had all gone fly away so the Today Programme was left with Mike Tomlinson, a newby minister anxious to make a name for himself. Mishal Husain had the dubious pleasure of skewering this immensely patronising, dishonest and evasive minister responsible for illegal immigration. 

She is always polite, well-prepared, incisive, articulate and calm but can dissemble folk like Tomlinson with her withering questions. Tomlinson fought back by feigning respectfulness and friendliness that became so obsequious that I was shouting at the car radio and hoping that Mishal would land a knock-out punch. No need, Mishal is cleverer than that, she let him ramble and repeat and patronise her so much that all the listeners could form their own opinions. Job done.