A Radio 4 host tried to stop Labour’s Barry Gardiner exposing the BBC live on air. She failed [AUDIO]

A Radio 4 host tried to stop Labour’s Barry Gardiner exposing the BBC live on air. But she failed.

Gardiner, the Shadow Secretary for International Trade, began to make a simple comparison on Radio 4. Seeing that media bias was about to be laid bare, presenter Martha Kearney tried to interrupt him. But on 30 May, Gardiner wasn’t having any of it.

Earlier that day, Jeremy Corbyn had forgotten the cost of Labour’s policy to extend 30 hours of free childcare to all two-year-olds. The Labour leader was appearing on Woman’s Hour. Across the BBC and the rest of the media, the mistake was headline news and thoroughly reported. But as Gardiner says, Theresa May and the Conservatives are treated very differently:

Barry Gardiner: when May said a child's breakfast costs 6.8p it's no problem but when Corbyn cannot recall figure it's headline news #GE2017 pic.twitter.com/i718bzNDIg

— Ben Claimant 💚 Join a Union (@BenClaimant) May 30, 2017

Gardiner’s simple comparison

Gardiner, who is also the Shadow Secretary for Climate Change, challenged the BBC presenter:

When Theresa May said that – not just in an interview under pressure not remembering a figure – but when Theresa May put in her manifesto that you could provide a breakfast for a child at 6.8p. At the current rate for cornflakes, that would be 3/4 ounce of cornflakes. No milk. Nobody thought that that was worthy of being the lead story on World at One. Yet you have chosen to make the lead story that Jeremy forgot a figure, which actually is there. We have costed it.

The Conservative manifesto mis-costed free school breakfasts at just 6.8p per child. Labour’s manifesto, meanwhile, costs the free childcare policy at £5.3bn per year.

Kearney then tried to reduce the Conservative policy to an “obscure part of the manifesto that somebody had dug up from a dusty corner”. But Gardiner followed through with another example:

Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, when asked earlier in this campaign what the cost of HS2 was, he said it was £32bn. In fact it’s £57.5bn. Politicians are having to remember lots of different figures all the time. Sometimes they get it wrong. Now you could say, ‘well Philip Hammond’s the Chancellor – he should never get the figures wrong’. But he did. So let’s focus on the policy…

Hammond messed up his own party’s costing for the HS2 railway by over £20bn on Radio 4 earlier in May. Despite the irony that the Chancellor was attacking Labour’s figures at the time, the BBC didn’t report it.

Gardiner then spoke of how “freeing” mothers up to work will help the wider economy:

Look at the Mumsnet survey… what is stopping [many mothers] taking on more employment is the high cost of childcare… When mums can go back into work… they are then paying tax on that. The revenues go up, the economy expands, the country grows… that’s what we want.

Gardiner challenges a top Conservative to the numbers test

On 30 May, it appears Gardiner was on a roll. On BBC Daily Politics, the Labour candidate exposed the same media bias in an entirely different way. He put top Conservative Michael Gove, who was sitting across from him, to the numbers test:

https://twitter.com/ReclaimTheNews/status/869542905165295618

On both counts, Gardiner eloquently exposed media bias in front of the BBC audiences. And on both occasions, the host had nothing to say in the media’s defence. Not a good look.

As the election draws closer, we must continue to call out a media which is apparently desperate to maintain the status quo.

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Featured image via Policy Exchange