Novara Media

Novara Media is an independent, left-wing alternative media organisation based in the United Kingdom.

Novara Media was founded in 2011 by James Butler and Aaron Bastani, who met in the same year during the protests against the increase in UK university tuition fees. Novara Media is a trading name of Thousand Hands Ltd, and its office and studio is in south-east London.

Hey @TonyParsonsUK - do a voxpop on this question on a high street of your choosing outside of London for @novaramedia?

That would be the definition of ‘getting out’, no? I’m pretty sure what the results would be….but always worth testing a hypothesis…. https://t.co/yyvQ9oSN8y

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 3, 2022

That tweet is pretty much what they do. Create noise outside mainstream media circles, say the mildest dissenting thing in the hope that it gets invited for a 'debate'. Creating more noise, recognition and subs so they can pay themselves.

https://novaramedia.com/2022/10/03/kwarteng-performs-screeching-u-turn-lula-faces-bolsonaro-in-brazil/

AB: "I do at the moment think that Labour would broadly govern like the Tories ... somewhat better, obviously".

"I do love our Friday shows, Michael - they're quite sacred to me"

Sweet.

fwiw I doubt Novara will go full on "hooray Starmer" in the near future because, aside from everything else, it's not a good business decision - the vast majority of ppl who give them money can't stand the guy and would withdraw if the site became that

more likely to have an era of conflicted back and forth ending at a "regretfully, we still encourage you to vote labour" message when elections come around

as I said before, my personal problem with the place is less about its ideological dodginess than the emphasis on low effort punditry which you could get from many free sources

Was Michael "sweet" when he supported an immigration points-based system?

Daniel RF: I agree with most of your comment - it would not be pragmatic for them to alienate their own base. I also think there does seem to be a 'conflicted' attitude emerging, or rather: to my surprise, Walker for instance seems quite keen on a Labour government.

I don't much agree about low effort punditry: as far as I can see, they use experts and people who are based on the places they write about. Brazilian commentator this week one of dozens of examples.

Getting experts on isn't actually high effort tho! I mean it's fine, a necessary part of the picture, the low effort punditry I was refering to was the novara host's own, not the interview sections. As I said, what's missing is actual research based investigative journalism, which is in v short supply in the UK from any corner and near non existant from a leftist pov.

I accept the explanation that they don't have the money for that yet but I do doubt they'll ever be interested in going down that avenue.

hard to trust them not to melt with any proximity to power - they sold out everything else for corbynism when it was big and will sell out corbynism for some kind of "critical" starmerism if that's all there is going in terms of mainstream relevance. I'm sure they do some good reporting but punditry-wise they seem to aspire to be the leftmost mainstream or most mainstream left media and will punch left if that helps them get there

my language sounds a lot more disdainful than I intend it I know it's just a job for most of these people and a huge part of my problem is just bastani

you just *know* they would have supported the british war effort in WW1

Is there not room for an alternative to Novara? That can reach similar or larger numbers of people. Maybe there already is/are, it seems there should be more than enough room for a range of choices in this sphere (whatever this sphere is). They don't really seem to have much competition (unless they're competing with US channels, which I guess they probably are)

I agree with most of your comment - it would not be pragmatic for them to alienate their own base

The low effort comment, maybe, it feels quite...comfortable? like they are coasting. I don't really know who their base is though

I guess Tribune would be that? I will say the Politics Theory Other podcast is consistently more illuminating than Novara for me.

Tribune has a better set of writers and is more consistent with their opinions.

THE OWEN JONES SHOW or Youtube channel is roughly parallel to Novara. I think he talks to relevant people, but I don't think he is as good at this particular job (hosting, anchoring, interviewing, etc) as his Novara counterparts.

Daniel RF: I don't share your impression that Novara don't do investigations, though accept it's not their #1 activity. They claim to have 'broken the Labour Leaks story'; they disclosed new information about the mistreatment of Apsana Begum MP; etc. Rivkah Brown is the main reporter on that front I believe.

Bastani also wrote an article in c. January 2020 questioning the funding and personnel of KS's campaign, issues which were ignored by the people who went on to vote for KS as LOTO.

Novara are kind of first entrants ito being populist leftist media that does social media and attempts to reach young and youngish people where they are. Personally can’t stand any of the men except James Butler. Ash Sarkar I will nearly always defend despite her being daft more often than not cos she gets huge amounts of racism, but I’m reminded of a leftist I follow whose take when she first started to become prominent was “finally there’s someone on TV as left wing as me…but why does it have to be Ash Sarkar?”

Somebody that listens as little and interrupts as much as Jones shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone

Novara aiming at younger and first entrant audience sounds right on paper, but I don't see how it works in practice. They don't really stream, they don't do debates or have people call in, their funnel seems to be mainly from TV stuff, arguing with the likes of Piers Morgan, and its not that clear there's much in the way of insight

They feel like a recreation of legacy media. I think the only reason they're any kind of first step is due to the free advertizing they get on TV shows, and name recognition out of that. And does their audience even skew younger? (not saying it does or it doesn't so if stats show it does fair enough)

I mean they don't do debates on their channel (as far as I'm aware). I don't mean their TV appearances

They didn't break the Lab leaks story, did they? The Begum story isn't theirs either (though Rivkah seems an ok reporter on it). Overall, these stories are widely reported in this left crank ecosystem and they are no better at commentary than a loud twitter account with a Mario avatar.

I don't know if Politics Joe counts as left, I've no idea what the rules are, but just has a quick look and view counts are killing Novaras (off marginally fewer subscribers)

Again, if you curate your twitter it was widely known who Starmer was hanging out with in 2020. These deficiencies are now being turned by Bastani, who is calling Starmer Machiavellic in 2022, when things have turned around purely because of timing.

yeah the Starmer aftertiming by Bastani last week just sums up what a self-serving muppet he is. There are plenty of non-affiliated nobodies on twitter who can comment on politics in a more consistent manner without all the grandstanding that comes from being involved with a content factory or doing all that "watch my video" bollox!

a lot of them seem like the kind of people who have always harboured an ambition to pursue a media career, so precisely the chirpy "influencer" types who are not aimed at grumpy old bastards like me. But I feel like anyone self-assured enough to upload videos of themselves talking shite every day is going to be politically dodgy and compromised because they love doing this shit so much!

This is pure guesswork on my part, but I'd imagine the "younger" demographic Novara targets is probably like thirtysomething millenials. Which is still younger compared to the rest of the UK media, sure.

Thats more or less my reading too, its difficult to see them as any kind of entry point for younger audiences and I don't see the effort or drive to do that. Which leads to its kind of cozy existence effectively advertized by guest slots on breakfast tv shows, and this generally coasting feel

Any left-wing landlords about?

Do I know any London estate agents and/or landlords who would be up for being interviewed for a podcast?

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) October 5, 2022

like he hasn't got the contact details of LRM on his rolodex, the fooking tool. How many of them there are would an interesting subject. From a '21 audit there are 18 Labour MP/Landlords - seems to way too low to me.

Michael Walker has previously stated that all landlords should be abolished.

once you've previously advanced the class struggle by some weak lip service ya get a free pass on NOT advancing the class struggle, sounds pretty solid tbf!

Michael Walker has previously stated that all landlords should be abolished.

How would this work in practice?
(I know one answer is "have a revolution", but within the context of a parliamentary democratic framework, how would it happen?)

It doesn't. From what I can tell, in Germany (not Italy) you have rent controls, restrictions on landlord eviction and standard regulations but even then I don't think this is the case throughout Germany (just from the fact we see a lot more about Berlin in the media here...basically because a lot of writers spend their time in Berlin).

And Walker is a social democrat, he believes in regulation rather than forced land redistribution.

And land is the key fact of life here. The Royal Family are landlords, Universities are landlords, as are many bosses who buy a 2nd home. Many people who grow up by the sea/scenic areas cannot afford to live there as prices are pushed up by air BnB landlordship. It must all be destroyed and the last thing they need is to be talked to and understood in any way.

I agree with Grandpoint Genie - I was not sure what MW was actually proposing.

Was he saying that all housing should be social housing?

I assume that when MW talks to the landlords he will be critical. Or perhaps, as he's interviewing them, that won't be a viable strategy.

tbh my guess is that MW wanted a very specific "unmediated" reaction-shot response from a.n.other landlord(s) specifically to the mini-budget -- you don't set up an interrogation stroke show-trial of an entire social layer and political-economic structure by trawling thru yr own follows (which will at best supply the view from a novara-adjacent sub-niche of the class in question) and for a general whitewashing of the landlord perspective you can just pick up any other paper

i'm not going to say this is NO different from the old far-left nostrum that revolutionaries should read the financial times and ignore the guardian -- not least bcz conflicted dynamics within the hostile forces is useful to know and a reconfiguration of some sort is possibly unfolding right now -- but the differences are more abt the pay-offs of public performativity of yr craft technique than the wisdom the nostrum does contain (which is where you gain the most solid info to help shape tactics and strategy)

the pitiless panopticon of soc-med has actually made tactics and strategy much harder in all political quarters (left AND right), a point that's going to be historically very interesting if we can live thru to a point where histories get written

"the pay-offs of public performativity of yr craft technique" -- i.e. these are self-evidently mainly negative hence our response in this thread

transparency is good not bad but also bad not good to put it in ddd-speak

"the old far-left nostrum that revolutionaries should read the financial times and ignore the guardian"

Bastani repeats this frequently.

worth noting those same "far lefties" are *absolutely banjaxed* by the arrival of the internet and now subsist as tiny grumpy ageing sects

not that the nostrum directly entails this outcome BUT

the pitiless panopticon of soc-med has actually made tactics and strategy much harder in all political quarters (left AND right), a point that's going to be historically very interesting if we can live thru to a point where histories get written

always hard to predict the future but imho the current situation w.r.t. social media makes it harder, coz as far as I can see "social media will be dead within 5 years and the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk etc will be recognised as pernicious more widely" and "social media will continue to burgeon and be developed technically so we all* have (non?)invasive direct brain-to-site interfaces"** are pretty much equally likely outcomes.

* prolly actually not all
** and if you think things are bad now, that's when the sh*t really hits the fan!

"Predictions are a fool's errand" -- Dr Aaron Bastani

"It'll go higher"

my prediction

this:

Everything happens so much

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) June 28, 2012

but more of it

I've often heard left people say you should read The Economist or the FT because you get into The Capitalist mindset. Well done Bastani for regurgitating this stuff, he'll probably get to work in his beloved media if the world doesn't burn first.

when we are mining asteroids so 15 billion people can take a crap on a 24 carat gold toilet and during adverse El Nino seasons there are no famines because ppl can make synthetic steaks on a 3d printer, then people won't be laughing at him then

If Bastani haggled ppl to read Trotsky I'd respect the trolling.

I get put off by the dissonance between their modern presentation (i.e. pretty good website and slick youtubing) and old fashioned content (not much changed since Tribune of the 80s, ie. on-point but poorly sourced and edited). That said the sweep of reporting on the site was surprisingly broad to me - I had written them off based on Bastani et al’s obnoxious screen presences and the gloomy sense that they’re all en route to being future Parsons and O’Neills

"the gloomy sense that they’re all en route to being future Parsons and O’Neills"

What is the cause of this sense?

yeah I could imagine Bastani going totally Brendan in later middle age.

not sure precisely what i wanted to prove with this but i went off and checked their relative ages:
parsons b.1953
o'neill wikipedia doesn't say but since he wrote for living marxism my guess is not later than 1980; probably somewhat earlier (he edited spiked! from 2007)
bastani b.83/84 (unsure why wikipedia is unsure lol)
sarkar 92

butler doesn't have a wikipedia entry at all but i think he's much the same age as bastani

my half-baked point is that by now the novara kids are all some way older and set in their ways than TP and BoN were when they became entirely unreadable (i suspect BoN was always entirely unreadable)

i guess sarkar still has time to do a tony parsons but this seems quite unlikely

The incredibly groveling apology they had pinned to the top of their Twitter account for the last 2 months has moved to their Twitter Highlights now.

People seemed to find it funny they had to make a sizable donation to Community Security Trust.

By they I mean @NovaraMedia.

kudos to the railway guy. This is supposed to be an alternative to the toxic UK media establishment and the best they can do is follow their transphobic talking points and platform some arse from the Young Turks x0=

xyzzzz__ are you really still in on Novara? I never watched/followed them but Bastani & Walker are fucking awful.

Sorry, I completely misinterpreted that tweet - good on him for calling them out. Really just add it to their disgraceful behaviour.

Novara are not looking too credible after that god tier defamation apology to Gary Lubner.

I never followed Novara much as a thing, despite still liking some of the individuals involved xp

you aren't asking me, gyac. But I actually do watch this shit occasionally. Because of Gaza genocide and despicable BBC coverage of ensuing genocide it became a habit. Bastardi & Walker are both utter cunts. Some of the others are good, but am puzzled how they can share any space with these cynical, bigoted turds.

Doesn’t speak well of them.

xyzz has always been novara hater #1, as shown by the begining of this thread

He was a fan of Rivak Brown and I think got tempbanned over something to do with her.

Rivkah Brown

I like Rivkah.

Is James Butler still involved with Novara? I think his LRB articles are usually good.

from what i’ve heard no active involvement these days

Then don't https://t.co/6eaxXFVSr6

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) February 18, 2025

So Ash Sarkar has a book out...I just don't read any contemporary leftish writing in book form. But going on a talk with Basto would probably harm it.

I think she realises this to some extent and is taking a short break from NM to promote it.

seems a bit how to win arguments by being nice to bigots and telling a tiny minority of lefty shitposters to pipe down. lefty shitposters are to blame for everything that has gone wrong with broken UK democracy, apparently. Mainly because they are frequently rude to Bastani and are often posting that they wouldn't donate the steam off their piss to NM!

I'm not convinced it will be a book worth reading tbh. Heavy recycled Jordan Peterson talking point vibes.

"The Left are competing over who can be the victim. It's 𝘴𝘰 corrosive to solidarity: It stops people being able to work together."

Ash Sarkar on how identity politics has fractured the Left against its opponents.@lewis_goodall | @AyoCaesar pic.twitter.com/PWdgmE3Z9X

— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) February 21, 2025

not a great start, she's both shitting on and distorting what intersectionality is in aid of plugging her book.

when i was a kid comics that weren't profitable enough ended up getting absorbed by other comics so you'd get a few weeks of The Victor featuring Tiger on the cover before they quietly dropped the name of the loser altogether.

feel like we're about 6 months from Spiked featuring Novara Media at this point.

the Buster & Jackpot of ‘alternative’ news sources that might actually be funded by the fucking MI5!

that comic amalgamation thing in the late 70's early 80's totally politicised me against capitalism before I even knew what it was.

i don't know whether Whizzer and Chips was a piss-take of that sort of thing or just doing its own bit. also kinda sad how few of those comics i could remember when i was trying to come up with the analogy. hopefully i won't remember Novara soon enough

even I can remember some of this stuff but was confused to just read now that Whizzer and Chips was also involved with an aggressive Buster merger!

Novara better find some rich benefactors to keep them afloat.

Re Whizzer and Chips see also Shiver and Shake where there were never separately published Shiver comics and Shake comics.

they always had a duology of both approving of and enjoying amphetamines and deep fried potato chips

The story of six(teen)-figure wealth transfers

https://files.ekmcdn.com/a5a631/images/shoot-1976-jan-31st-9857-1-p.jpg

some real big guns amongst the STAR WRITERS

I remember "Whizzer and Chips featuring Whoopee and Wow" but turns out the last 2 were actually separate publications at one point

"There is still room for a grassroots, anti-politics movement of the left, she says, but “successful populists are like sharks,” she says. “Blood in the water; they swim towards it, not away from it. And I think that if you’re looking at any form of left populism, you need a leader like that – a mad bastard.”"

Be more like Farage is it?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/07/i-have-a-pathological-need-to-be-right-ash-sarkar-on-culture-wars-controversy-and-corbyns-lost-legacy

she does specify a lula-type on the left -- but has there ever been one in the UK?

we've had smaller-scale figures (bob crow! oo remembers red robbo!) -- plus the usual talented grifters who are plainly intolerably splittist & shitty in person (sheridan, galloway)

scargill? i have an abiding affection for him -- a grebt tactician as second-in-command and never not a studs-up battler -- but in the clinch the miners (caught on the hop by their foes) weren't united and failed to last out the seige (three more months, perhaps even weeks, and they might even have won, but no one could know this at the time)

(i have to admit my judgment on corbyn by contrast was that his apparent gift for getting on with nearly everyone on the otherwise always-splintered left wd be a virtue and a skill scaled up and in a wider arena -- but of course it didn't scale up and the "wider arena" united to smash him, as it had scargill)

why didn't she just do a stupid video rather than thinly stretching out a plainly stupid and wrong controp for an entire book. FTR won't ever read the book and am crudely summarising from what she said about it on NM a few weeks back - which really didn't do a good job of selling it.

would like to refer to Sakar's pre GE interview with Mick Lynch in which he stated that Starmer Labour was the only option on the ballot for progressive change. This was a fucking bare-faced lie that she didn't call out! He was good at making vacuous Tories look extremely dishonest and dumb on live TV. But then in the final analysis: oh you have to vote Labour, there is literally no other choice on the ballot (when the Greens were actually 6 million miles to the the left of them on everything)

you need a leader like that – a mad bastard

Wasn't this touted to be Russell Brand at one point?

xp i haven't really tuned into her for a long time now but i always felt she was pretty good (back in the corbyn times) at the studs-up defence" of "our side" on normal debate TV

but
(a) that role has now been airbrushed out of normal debate TV and
(b) no one anticipated the recent luigification of the spectacle (meaning that his very 19th-century-style propaganda-of-the-deed signalled a potential unity across warring camps, except could even her putative "mad bastard" embrace this act as a wider collective project)

"what we need now is a dora brilliant" -- i mean maybe so? but literally no one with a searchable profile in the panopticon is will get away with arguing this, which thus strips out the "brave truth sayer" dimension to their act

re brand: yes by e.g. mark kpunk but it churned up instant and widespread pushback among his own immediate circle

Yeah, even the cleverest and most civic-minded of male comedians will always be compromised by being handsy or worse.

The takes economy is not designed to create and nurture real thinking or analysis

They are envious of this shit in Germany, according to some of the NM crew. In Germany, as they access adequately funded public services and don't die on hospital corridors, they are often heard opining ruefully: if only vwee had sumthink like zee Novara Media on zee Germann internet!

The takes economy is not designed to create and nurture real thinking or analysis

v true. which weirdly appears to be the pivot ash sarkar is attempting to move to, as a take.

Yeah, even the cleverest and most civic-minded of male comedians will always be compromised by being handsy or worse.

is this about brand? i'm confused.

if it's about other comedians known in person or whatever i'm grand

"she does specify a lula-type on the left -- but has there ever been one in the UK?"

Well Lula was a trade unionist and there is a hunger for this up to today from the left (Mich Lynch as the latest example).

What she wants is someone like her, but someone that will do conflict for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Obv I like this (to no one's surprise ho ho) but I think Corbyn showed that the nice and getting on approach can get close to power under certain conditions, so that's the problem with her take.

Personally I like takes as a thing bcz it has energy, and at their best takes do come from fairly good thinking and analysis but they are much shorter in words so you can put it across to people. You can't make good detailed policy with takes but at their best they come from stuff like principles.

UK trade unionist leaders tend be overrated arseholes and they don't exert any pressure worth shit on the Labour Party. I can't stand any of them including Mick Lynch. I don't know much about Lula but am impressed that he survived the Bolsonaro lawfare campaign against him, even Corbyn didn't get locked up!

I guess to be an effective trade union leader you do need to be a certain type of loudmouth arsehole, which are generally the type of people I have spent my whole life avoiding.

the Situationists got it right on trade unions and all the other hierarchical self-aggrandizing power blocs that suck up people's anger and despair and render them palatable for Capital

yes, absolutely that

there was an interesting stat on NM yesterday: 42% of various grades of cybercrime from creepy nosey-parkering on the private information of people involved in high profile cases to the dangerous stalking of vulnerable female crime victims is committed by cops or other cop station employees. Doesn't surprise me in the least.

"An overstretched, burned-out team cannot sustain the high standards expected and sorely required – not least in the current era of media sensationalism, silos, fake news and no fact checks."

https://www.redpepper.org.uk/culture-media/media/transition-time-for-red-pepper/

Tommy Robinson says that he started listening to novaramedia and Aaron Bastani and he used to hate Aaron Bastani but now he thinks he’s actually alright

go full right-wing on immigration and then you win a Tommy Robinson endorsement, yes so grateful for this bunch of careerist fucking grifters taking up the space where there could actually exist some kind of independent left-wing media.