It’s not been a great week for Gary Stevenson. Maybe that’s why he said he’s going to quit on Piers Morgan…
The Times kindly said Gary’s “willingness to put his passionate arguments to those who most forcefully oppose them makes for thought-provoking television.” The Telegraph dissected all the factual errors and concluded:
“Voices like Stevenson’s are vital to the healthy flourishing of debate in this country, but he would be better served by trying to prove he’s correct, rather than insisting upon it.”
The FT:
“YouTube is a medium in which the presenter largely talks at the audience. This is effective for a campaigner, but when it comes to conducting interviews, which require a back-and-forth, it can make for a frustrating experience. Stevenson is impassioned and earnest throughout, but nobody here is willing to budge. As a result, this is less a persuasive rallying cry than a series of conversations in which men who disagree with each other repeatedly butt heads.”
More despairing is the reception on the left. The Guardian’s two-star review said:
“This evangelising of a wealth tax should have made for a truly amazing documentary. But it allows its host to be totally out-argued by all his interviewees… Instead of Stevenson being left floundering, without convincing comebacks to any of them (was he not briefed? Was he paralysed in front of the camera? Has he simply spent too much time preaching to the choir and forgotten what it’s like to be challenged? Or is Neidle right in his frustrated pronouncement that “There’s no evidence you’ve ever thought about it!”), we could have had an hour of him being led through wider issues by a genuine expert and letting us all learn something along the way. This way was just a faintly embarrassing waste of time.”
Radical left tax commentator Richard Murphy said:
“This programme is deeply embarrassing. Gary shows himself quite unable to make the argument he sets out to deliver and, in the process, undermines the case for any form of increase in tax on wealth by failing to win any of the arguments with any of the people that he interviews, whilst emoting extensively, blubbing occasionally, proving himself to be all heart and no head, and someone lacking the expertise needed to make his case…
Gary appeared to do no more preparation for this programme than he did for his YouTube videos. In those, he has admitted that he is not a tax expert and does not know how a wealth tax could be designed or work, and that fact remained very apparent in this programme… without exception, he handled badly, failing to have almost any counterarguments to his opponents’ claims, making him look ill-prepared, lacking in expertise and without a case to make.”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy…
Lee Anderson, speaking to The Sun’s Tom Scotson, reveals the wokest thing he’s ever done: “I once had a vegetarian thought, about becoming a vegetarian. That was quickly dismissed when I had a bacon sandwich…”