Roar!

John Sweeney did another of those reports on last night's Newsnight where he ambushes some 'wrongdoer' in the street and then repeatedly shouts questions at him.

Alas, the famous John Sweeney 'roar' didn't put in an appearance, but it was a highly-charged encounter nonetheless, and it certainly made the ambushed politician look even dodgier.

The politician in question is one of Jeremy Corbyn's hard-left allies, Ian Lavery, MP for Wansbeck (near Morpeth in Northumbria if you were wondering - as I was. The constituency, as far as I can see, is named after a river that runs through it).

Evan Davis briefly noted, in passing. that it was the Sunday Times that broke the story, but otherwise it was presented as a Newsnight investigation.

This was only the latest Newsnight reporter to go after the Labour Party (most of their recent reports have charged the party with allowing Muslim women to be segregated and discriminated against), so the old charge that Newsnight only goes after parties of the Right (which was pretty much true when Michael Crick was there) no longer holds water. 

That said, it's noticeable that it's the Corbyn end of the Labour Party which seems to be getting the Newsnight treatment rather than the Blairite or Brownite end. So maybe it's less of a change than it might appear.