Labour frontbench MP Andy McDonald takes no nonsense from BBC Radio 4 Today's John Humphrys

Link to tweet

I almost never listen to the Today morning "news" programme nowadays as I can do without the blood pressure surge at that time of day, but I turned it on as I finished dozing this morning to catch the hot takes on Peterborough, and I'm really glad I did.

Humphrys was up to his usual tricks with McDonald (having given Farage an easy ride earlier in the show), interrupting gratuitously, patronizing, and worst, misrepresenting Trump's line on the NHS, denying that Trump said clearly it would be on the table during any trade negotiations before he backtracked a few hours later (and ignoring similar repeated statements from US Ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson).

McDonald stuck to his guns and trod the fine line between mirroring Humphrys' aggression and keeping his cool enough to make sure his points were made, at one point grappling control of the interview and reducing Humphrys to a spluttering, giggling mess when he had to grudgingly concede McDonald's point, revealing that it's all a lucrative game for the useless terminally biased old codger.

It's a shame that I and others feel the need to applaud on the rare occasions this happens, and an even greater shame what the BBC's flagship news programme, with pretensions to set the news agenda for the day, has been reduced to.