The View from 22 — the pickpocket state and Trenton Oldfield vs Douglas Murray

Did the protestor at last year’s the Oxford and Cambridge boat race last year achieve anything? In this week’s Spectator, Trenton Oldfield files a prison notebook describing his experience before, during and after the stunt. He considers his protest a success, raising the profile of elitism and inequality concerns. Douglas Murray thinks otherwise. They go head-to-head in spectacular fashion on this week’s View from 22 podcast, debating whether the politics of protest are changing, the scale of poverty and elitism in Britain and whether the country is on the cusp of a huge shift towards ‘direct democracy’ (14:40)

Fraser Nelson is joined by Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, to discuss this week’s magazine cover piece: on how British savers are being pickpocketed by the state (0:48). Surprisingly, both sides agree on the state of flux within our monetary system and the inability to measure what is happening.