Barry Gardiner: Labour’s media-man on fire has interviewers feeling the burn (videos)

Labour’s incredible General Election campaign continues to gather steam and reveal diamonds. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – in spite of the best efforts of Kuenssberg and others to present the campaigns as roughly equal in content and quality, continues to outshine Theresa May on every level with his ease and humanity in meeting the actual public and various Labour front-benchers have performed strongly on their brief in the media.

However, one man has taken many people by surprise. Barry Gardiner, Labour MP (now candidate) for Brent North and (until Parliament was dissolved) Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, is a man on fire.

Gardiner – who will be talking exclusively to the SKWAWKBOX later today – is a charming, softly-spoken man with a steel core. While Corbyn has been out on the campaign trail and meeting the public, he has become Labour’s point man with the media – and has been routinely dismembering attempts by interviewers to push the Tory line.

Gardner’s charm is matched by a refusal to be sidetracked or talked over and a canny ability to identify the key points to attack and leave them in pieces on the floor.

Watch the short video clips (and one audio) below and they will be some of the most enjoyable minutes you have this week. Unless you’re a Tory supporter, in which case they’ll be very painful.

Here he ‘pwns’ the irascible Adam Boulton of Sky over the free pass he gave to a Tory politician over the Conservatives’ failure to meet a key election promise, then getting Labour’s clear message across:

Sophy Ridge of Sky must by now be pleading with her producers not to make her face him any more, as these videos show – first on Theresa May’s dismal incompetence over Brexit negotiations:

And then – while fully conveying the excitement of Labour’s incredible, bold manifesto, he dismantles her ridiculous quotes from right-wing policy groups and shows how it’s the Tories that are hopeless at managing the economy:

You can sense Ridge’s desperation to cut him off but she’s struck silent.

The BBC’s Emily Maitlis is the next victim, as Gardiner spotlights her obsession with labels and her attempt to set a biased narrative last night:

Maitlis sounds rattled and desperate to make her tired old meme stick – seems the Establishment is seriously worried about the popularity of Labour’s leaked draft manifesto.

Then on today’s Radio 4 Today programme, in an interview which has social media buzzing, the BBC’s Nick Robinson feels the heat as Gardiner puts him on the spot for interrupting and wanting to answer his own questions – then gets Labour’s clear and eminently sane position on defence across with Robinson firmly in his place:

If you want to listen to the whole interview, you can do so here. It’s well worth it.

Barry Gardiner’s sudden prominence as Labour’s ‘man on fire’ putting the heat on Nick Robinson and others is apt, because Labour – the biggest political party in Europe and with a brilliant, bold manifesto that everyone’s talking about – is a party on fire that suddenly has the Establishment feeling the burn.

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