Sunday, Bono Sunday

As I've often mentioned, many, many, many times before, Radio 4's Sunday has been accused of being the most liberal-biased of all BBC Radio 4 programmes. 

(Discuss)

Today's edition, I kid you not, made this its headline story:

As well as the "niqab wearing superhero" and her creator - an aggrieved Muslim woman - we got:

1. a Putin critic.
2. Cardinal Nichols (ostensibly on to talk about human trafficking) being pushed to condemn the Dan Brown-like fantasies of Pope Francis's "right-wing" critics.
3. a happy-clappy piece about Syrian refugees in the UK.
4. a piece focused on a Muslim Labour MP, who promptly denounced 'Islamophobia' and the right-wing newspapers.

Now, that Muslim Labour MP forms part of an new, ongoing Sunday series about MPs and their faith. So far it's been all left-wing MPs - a Labour Sikh MP, a Catholic SNP MP and a Labour Muslim MP. I'm hoping for a few right-wingers to balance that out in the coming weeks.

(From almost a decade of assiduously listening to Sunday I'm well aware that right-wing politicians are rare species on the programme, unlike their left-wing counterparts).

Plus, unlike William Crawley when presenting, our Ed rarely quotes Twitter comments on the programme. Today he did, right at its close, and here's that very tweet:

Hmm. "After the last couple of years..." eh? Wonder why Sunday ended the programme with that one-and-only tweet? 

(Answers on a postcard to RhetoricalQuestions@IsTheBBCBiased.co.uk.) 

Oh, ah, eh, but...Lord Sacks was on to plug his new Radio 4 series on morality. 

This was the exception. But did it prove the rule?

Well, Edward Stourton let the cat out of the bag by saying that Lord Sacks had been invited on to plug his new Radio 4 series before he made his comments about Jeremy Corbyn being an antisemite. 

From what I heard Ed (and his programme) seemed to feel he needed to be asked about that (understandably). 

And you probably won't be surprised that up-with-the-lark Corbynistas piled in afresh on 'far-right' Lord Sacks on Twitter. 'Nice' isn't the word to describe many of their tweets.

So shall I quote Edward's questions/interventions to Lord Sacks about Mr Corbyn to you? Yes, I think I will:

• The Labour Party have called what you said 'absurd and offensive', particularly because you linked him with Enoch Powell, who was, in his legacy, a toxic figure I think it's fair to say because of the famous Rivers of Blood speech. Was that really an apposite comparison?
• Let me just pick you up on your interpretation of his words because actually, the Labour Party points out, he was talking about a group of Zionists. He wasn't talking about Jews. In other words, he was talking about a group who believe certain things rather than a group who are defined by their race or religion. 
• You really think that Jeremy Corbyn meant Jews? He just didn't, er, say the word?
• The other point made against that argument is that if you conflate Zionism and being Jewish in the way that you rather do with that [indecipherable]. Do you not then close down political debate? Do you not make it impossible to criticise...?
• Given how strongly you feel about this issue do you think Jeremy Corbyn should resign?
• What else do you think the Labour Party needs to do?

All very BBC Sunday.