Nick Robinson to the new Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, on Today on Wednesday: ‘I am asking you whether you told the truth and whether Boris Johnson told the truth and the simple answer is that you didn’t and he didn’t.’ Since he has the answers to all his own questions why does not Nick just interview himself?
In his regular Spectator column Charles Moore recounts how - and why - he spurned the BBC's advances earlier this week:
On Tuesday, I was asked to appear on BBC Newsnight to talk about the Sussexes’ interview. When told it would be presented by Emily Maitlis, I declined, on the grounds that ever since her political speech against Dominic Cummings on the programme last year, I have had no confidence in her fairness. Sure enough, she spoke on the programme that night of ‘the sense of the attempted suicide’ of the Duchess of Sussex — though Meghan had mentioned only ‘suicidal thoughts’.
At the time, my little gesture seemed rather pointless, so I was pleased to read in the next day’s papers that Ofcom has at last decided that the Maitlis diatribe against Cummings ‘had the potential to be perceived by some viewers as an expression of her personal view on a matter of major political controversy’. Hardly a bold rebuke, but a start.
Emily Maitlis's error was actually on Monday night's Newsnight when she asked John Kerry:
Just before we end, we are talking on a day that has been dominated by the Harry and Meghan interview. We know how important the monarchy is to soft power. Does anything in it that you've read, any of the accusations of racism or the sense of the attempted suicide change how America views the institution of our monarchy?
The Tuesday edition itself was notable for another error - one which necessitated an on-air 'clarification' from Emily Maitlis. She began one interview by saying:
But first we're joined by Guy Hewitt, former High Commissioner of Barbados, which will leave the Commonwealth in November - a decision that we should say has been years in the making. It wasn't as a result of the last 24 hours.
I can imagine, as the interview continued and Rev. Hewitt said what he had to say, that alarm bells began ringing in the studio as it dawned on them that they'd made a mistake, and that voices appeared in Emily's earpiece telling her to 'clarify' the matter. Towards the close of the segment, the following happened:
Emily Maitlis: And just let me clear up an inconsistency that I think I made. You will remain part of the Commonwealth, is that right, but you won't have the Queen...?Guy Hewitt: Barbados will remain...Yes, we will have a native head of state but we will remain part of the Commonwealth as the majority of members are republics.
I don't think the "attempted suicide" error has been corrected yet.
One of the minor agonies of the Brexit process since 2016 has been the existence of the BBC’s Reality Check, usually presented by Chris Morris. Rather than arguing the issue with political leaders, Morris gives ex-cathedra pronouncements on where the truth lies, which are then unquestioningly accepted by his flock of fellow-BBC staff. Funnily enough, his version of reality seems always to coincide with the view from Brussels.
On the Today programme yesterday, Morris was asked by a deferential Mishal Husain to pronounce on whether “Get Brexit done” was misleading. He said, in essence, that it was. He complained that the slogan gave the “impression” that everything would be settled by 31 January 2020, whereas in fact the Tory “rush” for a trade agreement by December 2020 was itself unrealistic.
When (and before) Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, BBC experts kept telling us that the EU would never reopen negotiations or offer Britain better terms than those they had given Mrs May. Yet they did, very quickly.
Nobody wants to be the one that says it's not going to happen. But it's not going to happen. Maybe, maybe, there is a 0.0000-0.3% chance that it will happen.
The current proposals on the table are not acceptable to the EU, full stop. Let's be honest about that. The chances of getting a deal now, between now and the EU leader's summit is zero, let's be honest.
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| The Crook O'Lune (near Morecambe) |
The Sunday papers have arrived on my laptop, so here's a selection of today's top stories:
1. Charles Moore isn't going to be the next BBC chairman
The Sunday Times reports that Charles Moore has ruled himself out of running for BBC chairman on "personal" grounds. He's not even applying. Unfortunately. Incidentally, John Simpson isn't impressed with the way the paper has covered this:
Last week's Sunday Times reported that Boris Johnson wanted Charles Moore to be the chairman of the BBC. Today, in a much less prominent story, it says Moore has ruled himself out, on personal grounds.'
The Sunday Times is behaving like the BBC there.
2. BBC journalist Martin Bashir "misled" Diana’s brother to secure bombshell interview
So claims The Sunday Times. The paper alleges that Martin Bashir, now the BBC's religious affairs correspondent, "obtained the scoop under a false pretext and by using fake bank statements". It says the allegations "will raise difficult questions for the BBC" as the Corporation conducted its own internal investigation at the time and cleared itself. The BBC says Mr Bashir is "unwell and unable to respond" but has issued a statement reiterating its defence of his behaviour.
3. Camilla Long on BBC Four's Black Classical Music
In her Sunday Times review column, Camilla Long notes that the presenters (Sir Lenny Henry and Suzie Klein) had "to keep reminding us what dreadful victims these talented people were":
At the end of nearly every scene, there would be a ceremonial confronting of the material, in which they demanded to know from various guests, and I paraphrase, “Why isn’t he more famous? Who were the racists who suppressed his cantatas? You began to think, why don’t they just let the music speak for itself? But as it went on you realised, it wasn’t about the music at all.
True.
4. The BBC tells off Dame Jenni Murray one last time
After her swift, post-BBC attack on the BBC in yesterday's Daily Mail, the Sunday Telegraph quotes the BBC's official response. It's a final dig at the opinionated former Woman's Hour presenter:
We wish Jenni well in her new career as a columnist but the public will understand the importance of impartiality whilst working at the BBC.
5. Michael Gove on Frankie Boyle's New World Order
The Mail on Sunday has an interview with Michael Gove. Here's what he says about Frankie Boyle's New World Order:
You have a group of comedians who engage in a 30-minute seminar informed by Marxist ideas and they think jokes about 'killing whitey' are worth the licence fee, then you have to ask a question. And the question is, why should it be the case that people in Middlesbrough and Mansfield should pay out of their salaries so that Oxbridge graduates can trash their values in that way?
A good question.
Making Charles Moore the next Chairman of the BBC and Paul Dacre the next head of Ofcom would be a bold act by the Government. But are they still just floating it? Iain Dale is confidently predicting that neither will be put in place.
Well, if the sources in Downing Street cited by the Mail on Sunday's political editor Glen Owen are correctly reflecting a serious, determined intent on the part of Mr Cummings & Co. to replace the departing Sir David Clementi as Chairman of the BBC with Charles Moore of all people then that would probably be the biggest shock to the BBC's system since time immemorial.
The newly ennobled Lord Moore of Etchingham is definitely the cat the BBC pigeons would least prefer to have put among them.
Unlike Sir David, Charles Moore wouldn't go native. Under him, the BBC would be shaken up, beginning next February.
It's quite a tantalising thought. But is the Government brave enough?
*******
Andrew Neil is being characteristically droll about it, even employing the time-honoured "choking on their muesli" crack:
BBC executives were choking on their muesli when it was reported that I was in the running to be next Chairman of the BBC. I have no interest in the job. But now the Daily Mail is reporting Charles Moore is favourite for the post, I expect BBC to be begging me to take it.
Charles Moore is probably off John Simpson's Christmas card list.
His latest Spectator column has the online headline The BBC has given up properly reporting on China. In it Mr Moore castigates the Corporation for having failed to replace Carrie Gracie as BBC China editor, for only having one correspondent there, and for preferring to safely report on Trump rather than report on China.
The BBC is not happy.
Here's the BBCs Robin Brant (intriguingly copying in Andrew Neil too):
This Spectator piece is inaccurate, wrong and a misrepresentation. BBC News has THREE correspondents in China, not one. I am one of them, my brilliant and committed colleagues John Sudworth and Stephen McDonell are the others. Fraser Nelson, Andrew Neil, please correct.
And here's the aforementioned John Simpson (not copying in Andrew Neil):
Charles Moore claims in the Spectator that the BBC has timidly 'given up anything like full reporting of China'. Absolute rubbish. We have 3 full-time correspondents there, & the BBC has led the way in reporting the treatment of the Uighurs. Fraser Nelson: an apology, please.
The Spectator has added an update in response:
Update: The BBC has been in touch to say that it has a grand total of three reporters in this country of 1.3 billion. But still, more than two years after Gracie’s departure, no China Editor.
It would be interesting to know exactly how many reporters the BBC has in the US at the moment.
*******
Update: John Simpson isn't giving up:
The Spectator has now ‘updated’ Charles Moore’s piece on the BBC in China. Not enough, but it’s a bit less of an insult now to the team who revealed to the world what was being done to the Uighurs. Let’s hope the Speccie checks its facts next time it attacks the BBC.
*******
Much later update: John's still harping on about it, but is (charmingly) softening:
I confess I've got a soft spot for Charles Moore. In 1989 I returned from Kabul with a strong story. The Independent & the Guardian wouldn't run it: an Indie exec explained to me that in his experience TV people couldn't write. Charles printed it in the Speccie & was charming.
Now, that's an interesting anecdote it its own right.
(How typical that he went to to Independent and the Guardian first! Very John Simpson!).
Wonder what the story was and why left-leaning newspapers were reluctant to run it? I'm doubting even the internet will solve that mystery from 1989, but you never know....
Yet another update: And within seconds of |Googling, the answer popped straight up as the main answer to a search for 'john simpson 1989 spectator'.
It's an impeccably BBC piece, even down to calling the strongest US critics of the Soviet Union's actions in Afghanistan "far-right".
So what went wrong for John Simpson with the left-leaning papers back in 1989?
Well, he half-criticised a liberal US media icon Dan Rather, and even that was evidently too much for the faint-hearted Independent and the Guardian, even back then.
That Charles Moore published JS's article - even though it's what we might now call a 'left-liberal piece' to the letter, and went after Mr Rather's (right-wing) critics with no sympathy whatsoever for either them or their views - truly is a testimony to Charles Moore's and the Spectator's enduring willingness to grant a platform to people who aren't the kind of people Spectator readers usually agree with, or probably even want to hear from.
And I'll keep on subscribing to it with added enthusiasm as a result.
Ms Maitlis might well win...a reprieve, perhaps slightly qualified by bureaucratic mumbling about “fresh guidelines” on BBC impartiality on social media which have been commissioned from its former Director of Global News, Richard Sambrook. Then Ms Valiant-for-Truth will have prevailed against the “suits” and the Government. She will have been allowed to state, as fact, that Dominic Cummings did break the rules and that Boris lied. Even if she loses, and the ruling against her stands, she is most unlikely to be demoted, let alone sacked. The suits will be portrayed as having given in to Government pressure. In due time, Emily will be promoted to a show with more viewers than Newsnight, or hired by a rival channel.
“The Kessler Foundation, a charitable trust that has owned the Jewish Chronicle since 1984, submitted an offer to the proposed liquidators Begbies Traynor this week, which would have seen them acquire the assets of both publications and run them as a merged publication.
But a rival bid from a consortium through lawyers Osborne Clarke has also been submitted, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The rival consortium is being fronted by former Downing Street head of communications Robbie Gibb, biographer William Shawcross, former Labour MP John Woodcock,
Rabbi Jonathan Hughes of Radlett United Synagogue, and prominent broadcasters John Ware and Jonathan Sacerdoti.”
“………a new consortium moved fast to intervene, and outbid the existing management in order to reinstate Pollard, see the staff right, pay off the debts and secure the future. Headed by Sir Robbie Gibb, a Gentile, the consortium is serious about reinforcing the Jewish Chronicle’s strength rather than shutting it down. Behind all this I detect a battle for leadership in the community. Those who are braver about confronting Islamist anti-Semitism have prevailed over the outdated establishment view that the greater threat to British Jews is from the far right and that Islamists should be appeased in the name of ‘interfaith dialogue’.
The consortium’s victory is good news. It would have been a weird epilogue to the successful exposure of Labour’s anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn if the most prestigious Jewish paper in Europe had then folded. As the general election result proved, the supposedly anti-Semitic white working class saw through Corbyn. The rising danger to Jews — as, though more surreptitiously, to Christians — comes from the alliance between the hard, secular left and political Islam.”
The conference, called “Facing Tomorrow 2013,” is billed as a meeting place for exploring the developments shaping the future of Israel, the Jewish people and the world. Its program includes former heads of state, academics, artists and business executives. Former President Bill Clinton is to receive an award from Mr. Peres.
Also listed among the speakers is Munib al-Masri, a Palestinian tycoon from the West Bank city of Nablus who has been working to promote internal Palestinian reconciliation.
Not surprising, but endlessly impressive that Robbie Gibb can type the words “former Sunday Telegraph editor” about Today’s editor and then write a whole screed about how her programme is too woke.
Anonymous: I also thought it was a joke when I read it on Guido. I am forced to think the BBC is deliberately taking the mickey and has done this just to hear all the complaints and generally wind up the "normal people" out here. Charles Moore should say "thanks, but no thanks" and not dignify this charade with his presence.
Craig: To be cynical, I did wonder myself if choosing Charles Moore - a regular critic of BBC bias - was the cherry on the icing on the cake of a deliberate BBC act of provocation, and that he'd do himself and his cause no favours by playing along with them. However flattering he might find the invitation, it would do him huge credit to turn it down.
Monkey Brains: I agree entirely that Moore should have refused this dubious "honour". I've read plenty of stuff from him to suggest that he knows how the BBC work...why didn't he realise he was being set up? Just because you're a "guest editor" doesn't mean you get to choose to select the narrative. Thunberg's BS will go unchallenged but the presenters will do everything in their power to undermine whatever it is Moore is trying to get across.
The following morning, on the BBC Today programme, Nick Robinson — who seems almost obsessively opposed to Boris Johnson, perhaps because of something or other in Oxford days (a failure to gain election to the Bullingdon Club?) — was riding the highest of horses. When an ITV journalist had shown the Prime Minister the photograph of young Jack on his phone, Nick complained, Boris had declined to comment and put the journalist’s phone in his pocket without looking at it. Psychoanalyst Dr Laura Kuenssberg later diagnosed this as an amazing ‘lack of empathy’. In a further act of lèse-majesté, which Nick reported in shocked tones, the Johnson entourage had somehow misled ‘some very high-profile journalists’ over an obscure related issue. Nick did not mention that, in the interview, Boris had expressed his sympathy with the boy’s case. Nor did he acknowledge that any Tory politician approached with the offer of a sight of a picture on a media phone while on camera in an election campaign would rightly have suspected a trap. Later, Iain Watson filed for the BBC a mawkish item online called ‘One sick boy and the NHS’, equating extreme protest with wider public opinion. On Tuesday’s lunchtime BBC News, efforts were made to imply that a Tory social media campaign had spread lies saying that the hospital picture had been staged. The BBC never offered a clear narrative about what had actually happened, or explained who had put Jack on the floor and why. It just wanted to keep going for as long as possible with the Jack picture.
This contrasted sharply with the BBC’s handling, also on Tuesday, of the leaked phone conversation between Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, and a Tory friend of his about how normally Labour voters in the north and Midlands ‘can’t stand’ Jeremy Corbyn, and how he would be seen in government as a risk to national security. Here it concentrated not on what Mr Ashworth had said, but on how his friend had betrayed him — not a line the BBC, with its uncritical praise for ‘whistleblowers’, usually deploys. In its PM programme, Evan Davis turned the Ashworth revelation into part of a story about ‘the fight between honesty and mendacity’, introduced with a quotation from the fiercely anti-Boris Lord Patten of Barnes, the BBC’s ex-chairman.
On Wednesday, Chris ‘Reality Check’ Morris seemed to endorse Plaid Cymru’s idea that the ‘lies’ of politicians should be subjected to legal supervision. Behind all this is the conceit that BBC journalism should sit in judgment. This is truly wrong, and quite different from the justified search for accuracy in reporting.The BBC’s constant attacks on social media campaigns are not crusades for truth, but protests by a cartel. On big issues on which it feels strongly, such as Brexit (which it opposes) and climate change (whose wildest alarmists it swallows whole), it is just as biased, though not as cheapskate, as the dotty rubbish to be found online. It is captivated by the Robinson idea of ‘very high-profile journalists’, never wondering whether it is good for democracy that journalists should be more high-profile than elected politicians. And it is beside itself with rage that a once high-profile journalist, one Boris Johnson, jumped ship, got elected and became Prime Minister.I was curious to find out what Chris Morris had said and where. He had a busy day that day, but it was during an exchange on that morning's Today that the Plaid idea was brought up. Here's what was said:
Chris Morris: Well, I mean, in the election overall I think there's probably been more false and misleading statements than ever before. And you can argue it's always been like this, that politics is to some extent about winning by any means necessary. But the amplification effect of social media has really had an impact this time. It doesn't really matter if people like me come up with learned explanations about why a number is wrong if that number then is pumped out by hundreds of thousands of people unfiltered on social media. And I think there will be a corrosive impact if it doesn't matter any more whether things are true or not. And that's one of the reasons why Plaid Cymru has suggested a new law which would make lying by politicians illegal. This was Plaid's leader Adam Price on the programme earlier:
Adam Price, Plaid Cymru: We cannot have a civil and respectful debate about any issue if we accept as the new normal that politicians can make false and misleading statements with impunity because then, you know, we can't have any kind of democratic discourse at all.
Now, that begs a couple of questions. One, how do you really define what a lie is when numbers in particular can be used in different ways to make different points and, two, something we are asked quite a lot, often by really quite angry listeners, why don't we call politicians liars, and my answer that is really because (a) it would become the story and I'm not sure that's useless. That's more reality TV than Reality Check, and also I'm not sure that lying in a deliberate hiding of the truth is the most difficult thing we're dealing with. It's bluster. I'm probably not allowed to use the full word on a breakfast programme, but it's BS. It's not really caring whether what you say is true or not. And I think that's a problem in politics now.
Mishal Husain: And what are the things that have come back again and again throughout this campaign that you and others have not managed to make go away?
Chris Morris: Are you giving me the whole of the rest the programme or about a minute to answer that? I mean, there have been numbers which come back time and time again. I mean, Labour saying that average households had lost about £6,000 a year since 2010 when, in fact, the average household has been calculated by saying you have two railcards and a two year old child, so that was not necessarily representative. The Conservatives talking about building 40 hospitals when we know they've only provided the money so far for six and building hasn't started at any of those six sites. And then, overall, 'get Brexit done'. I mean, the Conservatives are right that if they win and we leave in January then legally we will have left the EU. We heard Michael Gove a few minutes ago saying we can then focus on the NHS and crime and so forth, but is he really saying that next year we'll suddenly stop talking about Brexit and its impact altogether when we have to do a trade deal in record time? I think the reality is that, yes, legally we'll have left the EU, if the Conservatives win, at the end of January but we'll still be talking about Brexit and its impact for years to come.Is Charles Moore being fair to the BBC's Chris Morris there? Was Chris Morris being biased there?
Chris Morris: Another issue, I guess, is the pace of modern media. The fact that you can say live on air, on TV or radio, you can say something which isn't really correct, but to fact check it can take a few minutes. Sometimes it even takes a few hours if it's something complicated, and by then the conversation has moved on. Then of course, there are those things, and you have given some of those examples of claims or numbers that have been used again and again during this election, and it's notable that in some cases, even though there's been pretty comprehensive take-downs by BBC Reality Check and other fact-checking organisations, politicians have just continued to use them. And then the Prime Minister himself has made a particular thing really of doubling down on certain things, even when the evidence really doesn't stack up, most notably, of course, the issue of him saying that there will be no checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit, even though that is precisely what internal government documents and his own Brexit Withdrawal Agreement say there will be. You can then look at labour and Jeremy Corbyn, his message that the Tories are going to put the NHS up for sale. But when you look at the documents he released to prove that, that's not what they say. They don't talk about wholesale privatisation of the NHS. So I think we're in an age where politicians feel in a sense they can get away with things and they can communicate much more directly with voters than perhaps they could before. I think voters are smart enough sometimes to work this out. But if we get to a point where politicians don't care whether something is true or not, then that does I think get pretty corrosive for the state of our democracy.I'm off out soon, so I'm dumping this post lower down the blog. Please feel free (of course) to have your say, and to bias-check Chris Morris.
“There may well be people in the Conservative party who have an irrational hatred of Muslims, but the term ‘Islamophobia’ should be absolutely resisted. Unlike anti-Semitism, this is a concocted concept. A strand of Muslim thought sees all criticism of the prophet Mohammed and his faith as blasphemy and labours worldwide to ban it. Such Muslims are driven mad by the way Jews can cry ‘racism’ when they are attacked, whereas they cannot.
But in fact this is fair, because Jewishness is usually inherited and is not necessarily related to what you believe. Islam is. All belief systems must accept the danger of hatred, ridicule and contempt as the price for coexisting in a free society.”
The left, including the left that currently runs the Labour Party, is myopically devoted to distracting attention from the Islamist threat. ‘What about the far right?’, they’ll say. Such cynical and spineless whataboutery wilfully overlooks that the far right has not killed anywhere near 500 people in Europe over the past five years — Islamists, on the other hand, have. ‘Don’t look back in anger’, we are told after Islamist attacks. In short, lay a flower, be sad for a day, and then move on — whatever you do, don’t talk about it.
Getting love-bombed by Charles Moore again. Can you get love-bombed behind a paywall? https://t.co/uqmC1LtmBg— Chris Morris (@BBCChrisMorris) November 26, 2019
“Get Brexit done”, is the Conservatives’ principal slogan and unique selling point, so obviously it should be open to scrutiny. One should object, however, to the pretence that this is merely a factual question on which the media, rising above base politicians, can shed the clear light of truth.
One of the minor agonies of the Brexit process since 2016 has been the existence of the BBC’s Reality Check, usually presented by Chris Morris. Rather than arguing the issue with political leaders, Morris gives ex-cathedra pronouncements on where the truth lies, which are then unquestioningly accepted by his flock of fellow-BBC staff. Funnily enough, his version of reality seems always to coincide with the view from Brussels.
On the Today programme yesterday, Morris was asked by a deferential Mishal Husain to pronounce on whether “Get Brexit done” was misleading. He said, in essence, that it was. He complained that the slogan gave the “impression” that everything would be settled by 31 January 2020, whereas in fact the Tory “rush” for a trade agreement by December 2020 was itself unrealistic.
Morris might well be right about the struggles ahead, but he made no allowance at all for the fact that we are dealing with political issues here, not just technical ones. When (and before) Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, BBC experts kept telling us that the EU would never reopen negotiations or offer Britain better terms than those they had given Mrs May. Yet they did, very quickly.
Nor, in applying “reality” to the Tory manifesto yesterday, did Morris mention that Brexit is an event in law: if the new Parliament votes to approve his deal, that event of leaving the EU will indeed take place by 31 January. In that important sense, we will have got Brexit done.
If I had the resources of the BBC (over £5 billion a year, the great bulk coming from a compulsory licence fee), I would set up a Reality Check on its own claims. It would keep several hundred reporters busy throughout the “24/7 news cycle” 365 days of the year.
Someone like Nick Robinson, for example – another of the Today presenters – is just as good as Humphrys in the role of crazed dentist looking for holes in a politician’s teeth, but one feels that his motive is different. The essential Robinson message is “I know more about politics than you, so let me handle this”.
If we view Southampton as a microcosm of Britain, last night’s episode taught us two things: firstly that Boris Johnson is not quite as unpopular as his detractors - including the BBC - care to make out and secondly, that the Liberal Democrat’s new “cancel Brexit” policy is anathema to huge swathes of the general public.
Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel-Horwood, 54, has been banned by the BBC from using his ‘Fab-u-lous’ catchphrase outside the show. He was reportedly hoping to use it as the name for a range of wines. Judges cannot exploit their on-air roles for commercial gain.
Yes, I am undeniably privileged, something I am enormously thankful and grateful for. Socially, my opinions on class, the economy and politics are often dismissed because I’m “privileged” and therefore also “disconnected” — or, as the BBC referred to me when I was dropped from presenting Countryfile, “inaccessible”.
‘Oh, wearing jeans, are we?” It’s four in the morning last Thursday and John Humphrys has arrived for his final appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Actually, my trousers are pressed cotton, clean on and neater than anything he normally wears. But this is no normal day: it’s a special day and John has dressed special. In a suit. As he would have done growing up at home when something happened — a funeral or a wedding, perhaps. A working-class respect for time and place. For occasion.
One or two directors-general resented both his interviewing style and his prominence. I remember being told by a middle manager, in about 1998, that our interviewers should “go easy” on Blair’s government because it was terribly popular with the people. It was an instruction I totally ignored and certainly never passed on to Humphrys, who would have merely ratcheted up the ferocity a bit more. Later managers worried about the fact that he wasn’t quite woke, like all the rest of the BBC’s employees — forgetting that 75% of the country (that is, the licence fee-payers) aren’t woke either, and won’t be woke no matter how many alarms you set or how much our dozing bodies are prodded by the hyperbolic liberals in an attempt to make us so.
Behind Boris’s decision to appear was a mistaken cringe to the ‘mainstream media’ (MSM). The success of Donald Trump shows that the insurgent, anti-establishment candidate (which Boris is) must not defer in any way to the MSM. He must appear on their programmes only if he can ensure clear advantage, and he must never accept the agenda behind their programmes. He must communicate by other means, building sympathy with the ever-growing electorate which dislikes the MSM. By deploying silence, he seems bigger and deeper than if he talks too much. If he does speak, he flatters his electorate by addressing them narrowcast rather than broadcast.
As Boris’s team should have predicted, the BBC, via Emily Maitlis, attacked Boris throughout. So did its coverage the following morning. ‘Words are actions,’ said Nick Robinson on Today, sententiously editorialising. ‘Again and again Boris Johnson gets his words wrong.’ Up duly pop Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Heathrow airport expansion and the precise wording of the promise to leave on 31 October — all licensed to do so by the weak decision to let Boris go on.
Nadhim Zahawi: Judge a man by his actions, not just by his...a sentence taken out of context in an article in the Daily Telegraph.Nick Robinson: Mr Zahawi, words are actions when you're the leader of a nation, and again and again Boris Johnson gets his words wrong. Now let's go to the issue that you're saying is why you switched to him...
