Beyond the physical battlefield of the general election is the battlefield where candidates walk through constituencies handing out leaflets and trying to engage potential voters through conversation. This battlefield is often won or lost in the media, with politicians vying to control the message on radio, TV, newspapers and social media. This time, there's a new front to worry about: the UK podcast market is booming, with listeners across the market expected to reach 28 million by next year, double the number in 2019.
It seems like a new UK politics podcast has been launched every month for the past few years. The two biggest, “The Rest is Politics” and “The News Agents,” are consistently ranked in the top five on Apple and Spotify's podcast charts. The former, hosted by former Labour Party communications director Alastair Campbell and author, former Conservative minister, and avid walker Rory Stewart, has set the tone since its launch in March 2022. With around 700,000 listeners per episode, its live shows sold out London's Royal Albert Hall last year and will be at the O2 Arena in October. The hosts, who benefit from deals that give them a cut of advertising revenue, are rumored to be paid up to $1 million a year each, according to a recent episode of the BBC's media show.
Its success inspired rival podcasts such as The News Agents, Political Currency and Electoral Dysfunction. The formula is broadly the same: two or three hosts (usually journalists or former politicians), interviews and analysis of the political issues of the day, and a touch of (sometimes forced) humour and intimacy. Former ministers are also involved; Political Currency is hosted by former Conservative Chancellors George Osborne and Labour's Ed Balls. Like The Rest is Politics, these two podcasts are marketed on the premise that bringing left and right together can spark lively debate and correct the modern tendency to not talk to people we disagree with. With the UK on the brink of a general election, these podcasts are all in an audio frenzy, sometimes cutting “urgent” episodes to analyse particularly interesting Conservative scandals as quickly as possible.
But how will these shows affect the election? With Labour holding an average 20-point lead over the Conservatives in the polls, there is no media that can sway the outcome of a close election, and the podcast format “is not yet a mass medium,” says Nick Newman, a senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. During the election, The Newsagent was listened to 10 million times a month — hundreds of thousands per episode, just under half the number of The Rest is Politics. That's more than the print circulation of most newspapers, but far less than the millions who tune in to the evening news on television.
Newman says these podcasts “really cater to a certain group who are more educated, more affluent and interested in news and politics”. Many of them release daily episodes to provide political buffs with a regular dose of Westminster drama. Newsagent listeners “love what goes on behind the scenes,” says Emily Maitlis, who co-hosts the show with former BBC journalists Jon Sopel and Louis Goodall. “They love digging into scandals. They love exclusives. And they love the three of us together.”
After years as stiff BBC correspondents, the newsagents' presenters are now relaxed in front of the microphone. They swear, talk about holidays and Maitlis's dog, and engage listeners on a personal level. As with any kind of podcast, fans of political shows often develop a quasi-social relationship with the presenter. The PoliticsJOE podcast launched last April as a house audio show for PoliticsJOE, a youth-oriented digital media company that has been producing YouTube videos since 2019. Co-presenter Ed Campbell says listeners make “the craziest memes about us.” Scroll through the dedicated Reddit page and you'll find AI-generated images of the trio, including Oli Dugmore and Ava Evans, “riding XL-sized thug bikes across the Arctic wilderness.”
Most of the major UK political podcasts have a strong centrist dad vibe. Take all the hosts together and you'll find them mostly white, mostly middle-aged establishment veterans whose views tend to lean more towards the centre. You'll find very few fans of Jeremy Corbyn or Nigel Farage. The slogan of Alastair Campbell's The Rest is Politics is that he and Stewart “disagree”. It's sometimes hard to find disagreement on these shows, especially now, when the consensus is overwhelming that the Conservatives should be ousted from power.
