An event hosted by the Cultural Transformation programme.
Published 14 Jun 2017
BBC journalist and presenter, Jeremy Vine, spoke at the Legatum Institute about the growing gap between the establishment and ordinary people.
He has no qualms about seeing his BBC Radio 2 audience as ‘ordinary Britons’. As he puts it, listeners to Radio 4 were shocked at the Brexit results; the ordinary listeners to Radio 2 knew all along how the referendum would play out.
Listening to his callers has given Jeremy a valuable insight into how ordinary citizens think, and how suspicious they can be of those in positions of power.
Throughout his hugely entertaining talk, Jeremy used anecdotes from his long career at the BBC to return to the same theme – that of the increasing gulf between experts and the rest or astronauts and astrologers, as his upcoming book calls it. He gave examples of callers who refused to engage with evidence of experts and preferred their own common sense and experience. Understanding the genuine life experience of all British people is essential as it is changing the nature of power in our nation, through votes such as the recent referendum.
