Agony

Across the past week, and amounting in total to almost an hour of drive-time BBC output across four evenings, Radio 4's PM has been broadcasting a series of personal reports from BBC radio presenter Adrian Goldberg...

...(a regular host on Radio 5 Live, among other things, who sounds uncannily like another Adrian: namely, Adrian Chiles).

British, and from a German-Jewish background, Adrian says he's been agonising over whether to apply for a German passport in the wake of the Brexit vote.

I suspect I can guess what some of you are thinking already (or is it just me?): Why is a BBC presenter being blatantly partisan over Brexit, and why is BBC Radio 4 airing his partial views over an entire week of BBC broadcasting?

(P.S. Adrian's written the whole thing up, in a slightly more toned-down way, for the BBC News website). 

Well, the big question on PM was: With members of his family having been murdered by the Nazis, and his father having been a refugee to the UK from Nazi Germany, would it be right for him, Adrian Goldberg, to take German citizenship because of his fears over Brexit?

I have to say that, from the moment his first report began on Christmas Eve, it was obvious (to me) that he'd end up applying for German citizenship in light of "the post-Brexit world".

After all, why would the BBC broadcast it otherwise?

And so it turned out, at the end of the fourth and final episode tonight.

His application has now gone in.

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The whole thing was a fascinating listen, often genuinely absorbing (especially on the Nazi-era-related material), but it was also a very strange, very BBC, listen.

Yes, the programme featured voices from 'the other side' (e.g. Gisela Stuart), but here was a British BBC radio presenter actively considering, and eventually choosing, to apply for a German passport explicitly as a result of the Brexit vote, because of his fears of a 1930s/1940s-style situation for Jews arising here in the UK, sometime in the future, because of that public decision.

(How weird is that? What evidence does he have for such a wild fear?)

And here also, of course, was BBC Radio 4's PM, ever-so-impartially, spreading his 'agonised decision' across four days. 

(How biased it that?)

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For, yes, despite worries about continuing antisemitism in parts of the EU - specifically Poland - and his own concerns about the rise of AfD in Germany (one of whose leaders he got into a very heated debate with, and who he openly associated with the Nazis), Adrian still decided that Germany should be his own place of safety should the UK turn dangerous for Jewish people in the wake of Brexit. 

I'd have thought that he'd have been more concerned about the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government as far as antisemitism goes, but that was never mentioned, so it mustn't be much of a concern for him. (But what do I know?)

The peculiar thing is that, despite Adrian being an engaging presence and despite him being nice to everyone (except the lady from AfD, with whom he seriously lost his cool with, and with whom he took 'the low road' rather than 'the high road' - as Michelle Obama might have put it), this 'series' struck me as being BBC reporting at its most 'bubble-dwelling'.

Obviously, I could be wrong. But, seriously, how huge is the clamour among British Jews to flee to Germany to escape a 1930-Germany-style Britain emerging in the wake of Brexit? Isn't that hysterical nonsense?

And isn't a Jeremy-led Labour government more of a genuine danger?

And is Adrian Goldberg, in fact, a 'very BBC' tiny minority (of a minority) here made to seem like the voice of the people by a biased BBC?