As I hastily take my seat in the back of an anonymous-looking Panther taxi, David Aaronovitch – the fierce Times journalist – slots in beside me. Renowned for his brash journalism that is often unsympathetic to the views of the infamous owner of The Times, Aaronovitch tells me that “most of the stuff I write he wouldn’t agree with”.

While we hurtle towards the outskirts of Cambridge, with the tinny sound of the driver’s techno music in the background, I get to work on Aaronovitch. Looking for an easy conversation starter we talk about fake news in light of Trump’s most recent self-vindication of his unsuitability for the role of President: Sweden.

“Sweden. Trump said something about Sweden. It turns out what he was actually talking about last night was a documentary on Fox News. So, this is a President that takes his foreign policy from watching documentaries, but also believes that everything journalists say is a lie. It’s impossible to unravel this and make any sort of sense of this. We’re all in a state of mad relativism. What and who can you believe and has an agenda you can trust?”

Aaronovitch continues, a sense of urgency in his tone: “The one thing that is entirely new is utter and complete discombobulation – the business of just not knowing what the fuck is going on.”

Increasingly animated, he thunders: “I mean just what the fuck is this? How am I supposed to respond to this? At one moment you are the Washington correspondent for the New York Times – this is a big number, and the next moment you have this ridiculous orange person who has come from out of space tell you that you are shit. The big question you have is how you respond to it. One of the key phrases he is using about you is ‘fake news’”.

On the topic of fake news, we discuss the sensitive, malleable journalistic boundary between fact and fiction.

“It’s impossible to unravel this and make any sort of sense of this. We’re all in a state of mad relativism. What and who can you believe and has an agenda you can trust?”

“If I’m looking at the front page of the Sunday Express, am I really looking at something that’s a million miles away from what you would say is fake news? When you construct a story largely out of bits and pieces which may or may not be true – are you not then susceptible to the idea that what you are doing is not then fake news?”

Aaronovitch credits Trump with greater intelligence than most would, claiming the very issue of fake news is a smokescreen for his administration’s controversial policies. “Are we having this discussion about fake news so that we don’t have to have the discussion about Trump’s interests in Russia? Or the fact that his agenda, far from doing the things he says it will do for the kinds of people who voted for him, will actually almost certainly impact upon them incredibly badly.”

I interject at this point, reminding Aaronovitch that he recently wrote in The Times that it is “theoretically possible that President Trump may in some odd way turn out to be a success”. Seemingly at odds with his expletive-laden description of recent events in the United States, I ask for clarification.

“No I bloody didn’t. Why would I write that?” Aaronovitch fires back quickly. 

Petrified that I have managed to misquote and subsequently insult Aaronovitch – putting the balmy temperament of our impromptu taxi journey into jeopardy – I shakily recheck my notebook and read the direct quote back to the seething Aaronovitch.

Larry Elliott: ‘Economics is not a hard science, it’s really more like a form of medieval witchcraft’

Thankfully, he acquiesces: “I think it’s possible that there’s a short-term economic boom on the back of some of his policies in the States,” he responds, laughing and qualifies this by saying, “I don’t see any evidence at the moment that Trump is going to be anything more than a catastrophe.”

Talking about The Times, Aaronovitch expresses his dismay at Michael Gove being the first UK journalist to interview President Trump: “To give the bloody scoop to Michael sodding Gove, I mean, nice guy though he is, that really sticks in my grill.”

“How the fuck did that happen? I mean, but really, how did that happen? I don’t think it happened because Michael Gove – the intrepid boy cub reporter – phoned up the White House and said: on the off chance, do you have an interview slot available?”

Looking forward to 2020, I tell Aaronovitch that the Democrats must shift to the left and pick up on Bernie Sanders’ populist, social democratic momentum to reclaim the White House. Mouth ajar, Aaronovitch looks at me as if I have just slapped him in the face: “Shift left?” he splutters, exasperated.

Undeterred, I question whether another establishment candidate who supports an unfettered neoliberal agenda is really the best option? Aaronovitch is borderline insulted by my pretentious language: “I don’t even know what that means. I mean what is an ‘unfettered neoliberal agenda’? Is it where you spend a lot of extra money on healthcare?”

I mount a feeble defence, which is quickly interrupted: “Well, that’s what Clinton was talking about and that’s what Blair did.” Perhaps the most surprising feature of Aaronovitch’s politics is the fundamental evolution he seems to have undergone: the son of a senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Aaronovitch has positioned himself far more centrally, supporting both Blair and Clinton – solid centrist capitalists.

“I don’t see any evidence at the moment that Trump is going to be anything more than a catastrophe”

After this minor hiccup, and feeling more confident to examine some of Aaronovitch’s past loyalties, I progress onto Tony Blair and his re-emergence on the political stage. “I’ve been mostly a Labour Party supporter until Corbyn came in and Tony Blair is the most successful Labour politician of my lifetime,” Aaronovitch tells me. Evidently, his renowned support for Blair has not subsided, though I ask if being elected is all that matters.

“Well not just being elected, but also he did some really important things – it’s just that people choose either not to remember them or to negate them.”

One of Aaronovitch’s famed comments is when he wrote in 2003 that we would never trust a politician again if weapons of mass destruction weren’t found in Iraq. Aaronovitch admits this was foolish: “I wrote a year later and said that that was a really, really stupid thing to say. I got so much shit for it. It was a dumb thing to say because it didn’t allow for the possibility that people were mistaken, and that’s always actually the most likely explanation for anything.”

Our taxi pulls up in front of the train station. Aaronovitch strides briskly away, mystically silhouetted by a flickering lamp post. More elusive to me than he was at the beginning of our brief encounter, I walk away clutching an interview but feeling empty-handed