Resignation matter

After a short spell out of the office, I’ve just watched Politics Live. Today’s episode was chaired by Andrew Neil. (supposed to be the BBC’s most effective and impartial 'grandee') The absence of a Conservative spokesperson was noted in the usual way: “we asked, but no-one was available”

“Is this very surprising?” one might ask? “Not really,” one might answer, in the light of the BBC’s well documented political leanings. I haven’t time to link to the numerous examples of ambushes and disproportionate Tory-hostile weighting we've highlighted over the years.

I did wonder, though, whether this unofficial Conservative BBC boycott put Neil in an awkward position. Normally, the BBC might feel obliged to act as devil’s advocate, if only occasionally, to adjust the imbalance. But any sign of ‘defence of a Tory’ from the BBC coming from the likes of Neil would not go down well. Maybe this was the reason that Andrew Neil seemed (to me) to be somewhat ‘present but not involved’. 

Eyebrow

Laura Pidcock, wearing on-trend woolly caterpillar eyebrows, persistently sidestepped questions on Labour’s position on immigration, whereupon Andrew Neil gave a sigh of resignation and changed the subject. 

More representative of the BBC’s wilful and misconceived conflation of antisemitism and Islamophobia was the item about the Conservative councillor who has resigned over Islamophobia. Kyle Pedley happens to be one of those head-upside-down types (bald with bushy beard) the type of appearance which cries out for one particular taboo and apparently 'unaskable' question whose explicit articulation is a matter of resignation.

Baroness Warsi was wheeled in to express her ‘outrage but not surprise’ that councillors interviewing a prospective colleague, a Muslim,  had the temerity and tactlessness to inquire about the extent of his religiosity. Baroness Warsi’s outrage at this intrusive questioning was further triggered at the notion that anyone with doubts about Islam’s compatibility with western democracy is irredeemably racist. Admittedly, the way the questioning in the interview was framed did sound clumsy and crass, but surely under normal circumstances not a resigning matter.