The Art of Political Interviewing

Andrew Neil has long been one of the finest journalists in the UK. He has been chairman of The Spectator, chairman of Sky TV, editor of The Sunday Times, and a BBC anchor, where his grueling interviews of politicians became legendary. He’s currently a columnist for both the UK and US versions of The Daily Mail and an anchor for Times Radio. In the US he went viral after a car-crash interview with Ben Shapiro.

For two clips of our convo — on Europe’s steady decline, and Trump’s cluelessness on tariffs — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up near Glasgow as a working-class Tory; his mother working in the mills; his father fighting the Nazis; his merit-based grammar school (before Labour dissolved them); thriving on the debate team; studying US history at university; Adam Smith; reporting on The Troubles; covering the White House at The Economist in the early '80s; Reagan Dems and Trump Hispanics; covering labor and industry in the Thatcher era; her crackdown on unions; the print unions that spurred violence; Alastair Stewart; tough interviewing and how the US media falls short; Tim Russert; audio of Neil grilling Shapiro and Boris; the policy-lite race between Trump and Harris; populism in the US and UK; Greenland and the Panama Canal; the rise of autocracy in the 21st Century; recent elections in Europe; Starmer; US isolationism past and present; the Iraq War; the 2008 crash; Taiwan and semiconductors; China’s weakening economy; the overconfidence of the US after the Cold War; Brexit; Covid; mass migration; AI; and the challenge of Muslim assimilation in Europe.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: John Gray on the state of liberal democracy, Jon Rauch on “Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy,” Sebastian Junger on near-death experiences, Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Yoni Appelbaum on how America stopped building things, Nick Denton on the evolution of new media, and Ross Douthat on how everyone should be religious. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.