James O'Brien: "What does "right-wing" mean?"

Newsnight presenter James O'Brien went to a couple of watering holes in London for last night's programme - the first a pub where Nigel Farage hangs out, the second a posh eating place where left-wingers hang out.

In the process, he offered us his take on a few things, including what it means to be "right-wing".

[Please make sure you've not got a hot drink in your hand while you read it or you might be liable to drop it and scold yourself]:

What does "right-wing" mean? People who tell me they're "right-wing" in pubs like this often seem to think that a problem has been identified and it needs to be solved not by affecting them but by affecting other people, as if almost votes now are being cast in the hope of seeing other people's lives made worse rather than our own lives made better.

So that's what being "right-wing" means then - having the desire to make other people's lives worse. Who knew? 

If Owen Jones and Jeremy Corbyn were ever to write a political dictionary for their New Jerusalem, they might like to make use of that definition. The rest of us are free to simply dismiss it as mere abuse from a left-wing Newsnight presenter. 

We never got James O'Brien's equivalent take on what "left-wing" means, but we did get his views on the present Labour leadership:

Today...you wonder what the Labour leadership actually does speak for or represent. Increasingly, it seems to be privileged, usually privately-educated people who, in a very well-meaning way, speak for a constituency of voters that nobody wants to admit to being part of, and this narrative of "hard-working" has created, of course, the notion that anybody who supports the Labour Party isn't "hard-working". 

That's a left-wing take too, albeit a more sympathetic one ("in a very well-meaning way"). I don't see how his final statement follows from what preceded it though, despite his use of the phase "of course". I think it's a non sequitur.

His whole report seemed confused. And biased.