Two things that don't normally go together: 'Woman's Hour' and chuckles

 

I've never managed to form a fully-rounded opinion yet of Emma Barnett, the new presenter of Woman's Hour, but I chuckled at a few things in a laudatory report in The Times today about her debut yesterday. 

The first chuckle came on reading that that HM the Queen sent a congratulatory message to the programme on its 75th anniversary. Emma's first act yesterday was to read it out. 

The Queen professes herself a fan, and I bet the HRH the Duke of Edinburgh is a huge fan too. I can just imagine him being (like his eldest son) all ears for the very latest about gender bias in school books, sustainable fashion, student sex work policy, Extinction Rebellion, post-partum psychosis, female footballers and dementia, and the orgasm cult. 

The second chuckle came on reading that Emma's first interview - and Woman's Hour's opening interview - was with Sonia Khan, a woman "peremptorily sacked" by BBC bogeyman Dominic Cummings. 

How very BBC! - especially from someone who spent last year as a regular presenter on Newsnight, the BBC programme that went after Dom so hard and so personally. 

They're truly obsessed with him, aren't they?

The third chuckle came from reading that, apparently, this interview didn't work out well though for the BBC as Ms Khan said she was "not going into the detail" about it and that it was "not as dramatic as it sounds". No scoop then for Woman's Hour. (Ha ha! Classic Dom!)

The fourth chuckle concerned something that took me back before even reading it, having had a look at the BBC Radio 4 schedule prior to the programme being broadcast: There were two men listed as guests: Jeremy Hunt and Nazanin's husband Richard Ratcliffe. 

Men, on Woman's Hour?!? I thought Woman's Hour was a mans-exclusionary radical feminist (MERF) programme. 

Apparently though, "Before the show aired [Emma] Barnett had promised that she would have more men on it". 

At least the departed Dame Jenni and Jane, after copious consumption of smelling salts at that absolute outrage, can just about breathe a sigh of relief that the men in question weren't transwomen.

Emily Maitlis scores a hattrick

 

I wonder if Emily Maitlis now tops the charts for most 'Upheld' complaints over the past couple of years as far as the BBC goes? 

(Maybe she's aiming to get into the Guinness Book of Records?)

In September 2019 the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit upheld a complaint against her for her "sneering and bullying...persistent and personal" interview with Rod Liddle. 

In May 2020 the BBC found her to be in breach of their impartiality guidelines again over her (in)famous Newsnight Dominic Cummings monologue. 

And in December 2020 - on Christmas Eve to be precise (sneaked out the day before Christmas, when the Brexit deal was agreed and major new Covid lockdown measures announced, some nine months on from the original programme) - the BBC released their latest ruling against Emily Maitlis for her March 2020 documentary, Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story. 

Remarkably, they cleared her over impartiality but ruled against her over accuracy.

The News-watch complaint itself ran as follows:

This programme set out to explore the career, character and thinking of Dominic Cummings, with contributions from a range of critics and admirers. A viewer complained that the programme overall was biased against Mr Cummings (lacking “sufficient balancing opinion”), and gave the impression “That he was prepared to be recklessly violent towards political opponents; that he had ‘tribalist’ ‘neo fascist’ prejudice against Muslims; and that he was a liar who grossly misrepresented statistics in order to further his political aims”. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of impartiality and accuracy.

And this is the ruling against Emily Maitlis:

The attribution of prejudice against Muslims related to a sequence which included the following quotation from a paper entitled “How Demographic Decline and its financial consequences will sink the European Dream” published by a think tank directed by Mr Cummings: “The consequences of economic stagnation coinciding with rising Muslim immigration cannot fill anyone familiar with European history with anything other than a sense of apprehension, at least, about the future of the Continent”. The ECU agreed that, in the context of this sequence, the quotation tended to support the impression complained of. In the think tank paper the quotation stood in a context which pointed to Europe’s relative difficulty in integrating immigrants, rather than anything connected with Islam, as the source of tension, and the paper itself concluded “There is little reason to be optimistic about Europe’s capacity to avoid a growth of extremist political activity, or its desire to avoid the traditional response of polities in crisis – blaming foreigners”. In the ECU’s judgement, the quotation would have conveyed a different impression in the programme if more had been done to reflect its original context. As this risked misleading viewers, there was a breach of the BBC’s standards of accuracy, and this aspect of the complaint was upheld.

The BBC is notoriously poor at making concessions over such things, and now Emily Maitlis's failings have forced the BBC into admitting that its critics were right three times in the last year and a bit alone. You'd think they might take action.

Fear not though, if you're worried for Emily. I'm sure - as usual - that the full force of the BBC won't fall on her head and that she'll be allowed to carry on regardless. She's a world record to win after all. You go girl!

Gotcha!

 

When does the political becomes personal?

When still at Sky News, Lewis Goodall famously had an extremely bruising six-minute encounter with Dominic Cummings during which Mr Cummings was - how shall we put it? - highly impolite to Lewis. 

("Another clueless journalist", "You don't know what you're talking about", "You're talking like a toddler", "I think you're not a very good journalist, mate", "This clown, what's he like, eh?", "You're so panicky and you're talking so much you can't listen to what's being said to you", "If you're going to do interviews why don't you actually research what you're talking about before you come out here, then you wouldn't look like such a joker").

It's crossed my mind many times since that Lewis has pursued Dominic Cummings so mercilessly over the past year and more because of that humiliating encounter. I've suspected it must still strongly rankle with him.

So, the closing words of his Newsnight report last night struck me as being particularly revealing.

Referring to the departure of Donald Trump and Dominic Cummings, Lewis concluded, "This may be an interregnum for the politics of disruption, rather than an ending, but 2021, for all sorts of reasons, is looking to be more polite, all round." 

Revenge is a dish best served cold, eh?

*******

Anyhow, here's a transcript of Lewis Goodall's op-ed piece last night in which, among other things, he endorsed claims (probably accurate) that Boris Johnson "a shape shifter":

It has been an age of disruption, of old certainties fading, as if politics were smelted down and being cast anew. But if ever there were a counterrevolution it is surely this, emerging before our eyes. The glimmers of the old order re-emerging, with that order maybe claiming the scalp of our own Downing Street Jacobin. The architect of so much of the revolution of recent years, Dominic Cummings. His party says it is time to move on.  

But Brexit isn't done yet and it is here that Cummings' absence attracts most feverish attention. Sources in the EU read this as a Prime Minister heading for a crunch week, who is about to back down. It is possible, but others are more cautious.  

It may be the end of an era, but in some ways it isn't the departure of Cummings himself that matters most, but that of Donald Trump's. This week a former Democratic White House official lambasted Johnson's congratulations to Joe Biden, calling him "a shape shifter". It was meant as an insult but in many ways that is precisely what Boris Johnson is. He has shifted his political form again and again, from liberal Mayor of London to born-again populist. It is possible that it is happening once more.  

Johnson is already preparing for this new Biden-led world. I'm told that we should expect a significant speech on climate change from the Prime Minister in the coming weeks. But as for the rest of policy, Cummings or not, there is a huge question mark. The question on everyone's lips is what difference to policy a Johnson government absent Cummings will make and the answer is, well, it will be quite difficult to tell, because on a whole array of domestic issues it is not as if Dominic Cummings or Johnson have developed comprehensive new sets of proposals. Now, part of that of course is the pandemic, but part of it is also the story of a premiership which still lacks definition, which beyond the fact of Brexit and the talk of levelling up still hasn't articulated how it will begin to achieve many of its aims. But what there probably will be without Cummings is a change in tone, an end to the politics of the permanent war footing. This may be an interregnum for the politics of disruption, rather than an ending, but 2021, for all sorts of reasons, is looking to be more polite, all round. 

******* 

P.S. Lewis Goodall does seem to attract certain responses - e.g. This tweet:

....received a fair few variations on this particular theme:

Really shouldn't need saying but maybe, just maybe, just a little bit of a maybe, the Tory MP texting Lewis Goodall might not be the most representative of their colleagues or their members or their voters.

That was a polite one.

Is it personal?

 

Perhaps the most revealing lapse in Lewis Goodall's New Statesman piece about the UK exams debacle is where he plays to the gallery over Dominic Cummings:

It is hard not to dwell on the fact that at the heart of this government is a man who mandates the reading of a book entitled Superforecasting for political ­advisers, who lauds the scientific method and its predictive capacities, and who has forged a remarkable electoral record through the employment of data to understand how voters think. We cannot know the extent of Dominic Cummings’ involvement in this sorry episode, and it may be that he was not part of it at all. But his approach encapsulates a method of governing that was on full display throughout. 

So even though he admits that Dominic Cummings may not have even been involved, he just drops his name in and, thus, associates - or, perhaps more accurately, smears - him with the mess. 

It may be "hard" for him not to "dwell on" Dominic Cummings simply because it appears that he's obsessed with the man, though knowing that plenty of like-minded people (his gallery) are similarly obsessed can't help either. 

Here are two links that demonstrate that obsession. Just spend a few minutes browsing through them and you'll see that they are neither dispassionate nor balanced:

His pre-BBC tweets with the word 'Cummings'

His BBC tweets with the word 'Cummings' 

It may, of course, be personal. Many of you will have seen this at the time but it makes for fascinating viewing even now:

As promised, full 5 mins exchange between me and Dominic Cummings where, among other things, he suggests the Prime Minister intends to go around the Benn Act. https://t.co/JjcpEez1d9

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) September 27, 2019

All this said, who am I to accuse Lewis Goodall of being obsessed about Dominic Cummings? After all, I appear to be at least as obsessed with Lewis Goodall!

Hidden motives?

So Emily Maitlis says she got a supportive text from Dominic Cummings after the BBC criticised her for breaching BBC editorial guidelines with her controversial Dom-and-Boris-bashing Newsnight monologue.

Now, if all's as Emily tells it, that's definitely quite something: It's astonishing that DC sent it. And it's almost as astonishing that EM kept quiet about it for a few weeks and then dropped it into a Tatler interview. 

That he evidently had her phone number initially surprised me - for all of two seconds. Of course he had it! 

Emily's choice of phrase to describe Dom's text was 'peak surreal' - a 'peak metropolitan elite' way of putting it, you might think! 

So what were they both up to here?

An op-ed and a monologue.

“Good evening, Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that. And it's shocking the government can not. The longer ministers - and prime minister - tell us he worked within them, the more angry the response to this scandal is likely to be. He was the man - remember - who always 'got' the public mood. Who tagged the lazy label of 'elite' on those who disagreed. He should understand that public mood now: one of fury, contempt and anguish. He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools. And has allowed many more to assume they can now flout them. The prime minister knows all this. But despite the resignation of one minister, growing unease from his backbenchers, a dramatic early warning from the polls, and a deep national disquiet, Boris Johnson has chosen to ignore it. Tonight we consider what this blind loyalty tells us about the workings of Number 10. We do not expect to be joined by a government minister. But that wont stop us asking the questions.  

The people who defend Emily Maitlis’s monologue by claiming she was “merely telling the truth” are wrong. The monologue was riddled with opinion. 

There is some confusion here. In the above transcription we have, "it's shocking the government can not.”  Whereas in another one I find: "It’s [the public is] shocked that the government cannot…

If the former is accurate, then who’s to say what the country can and cannot see? Is it Emily Maitlis’s place to judge whether something *is* shocking? If the latter is correct, it’s still presumptuous to speak for the country.  I suppose she could legitimately have said “I’m shocked”, (still a breach of impartiality, but honest at least) otherwise it’s just spin. 

Calling the whole affair a ‘scandal’ is also an opinion, and in this particular context the term ‘lazy’ is simply an opinion, not ‘a fact’.

A clearer demonstration of where personal opinion overrides impartiality is the assumption that ‘the anger’ is directed at the government for prolonging the issue by refusing to bow to (the media’s) demands to sack Cummings, when much of the anger we now see is directed at the media for prolonging it with its persistent demands that Cummings is sacked.

Broadcasting assertive pronouncements about the mood of the public exposes extraordinarily deluded levels of BBC groupthink and the Newsnight crew must by now be aware that much of the “fury, contempt and anguish” is boomeranging back at them.

Maitlis even seemed to be offering free justification to anyone who wants to flout the lockdown strategy. Lastly, that passive-aggressive, pretendy to be hurty snipe about being snubbed by the government was ill-judged. 

Here’s my monologue for the day:

The internet and social media provide a platform to all and sundry to spout their stupid opinions all over the internet - that means people like me get equal billing with experts who know things - but an even bigger downside of unmoderated freedom of expression is that nuanced opinion has disappeared from the normal discourse. Half-measures are extinct. All nuance is now a big bore.

It works like this. Should someone publicly express a belief that - say, Donald Trump’s Middle East strategy is a fundamental improvement on - say, Barack Obama’s Iran-friendly one, it’s taken as read that they also enjoy hideous bling and incontinent, limited-vocabulary midnight Tweeting. 

Similarly, it's hard to uncouple support (in principle) of Boris’s decision to stand by Dominic Cummings from blinkered refusal to spot any flaws in his defence.

However, on one important point, I think Maitlis is correct.  As Dominic Cummings is involved in devising government strategy, a job that necessarily entails gauging public opinion,  misjudging the public mood so badly does damage his credibility. Cavalierly risking a non-essential recreational jaunt, then offering a far-fetched excuse is certainly dumb enough to make me feel uncomfortable about the extent of his influence on government policy.

But still, I hope Boris sticks to his decision. To cave in to the BBC would really signal the beginning of the end or maybe the end of the beginning, and badly misjudging the mood of the public applies equally to Maitlis and the BBC, if not more so (Times (£)) than it does to Cummings.  

The media is running the country

I’ve been searching online for a piece that most reflects my feelings on Cummingsgate.

Somewhere, during this absolute waste of my time, I spotted a commenter speculating about what would happen if the media loses its all-out quest for a scalp?  Is it a quest or a crusade?

If it wins, the scent of blood will further empower the media, which seems already to be running the show; but if the PM stands his ground, the puffed-up media might deflate like a burst balloon.

Just to clarify, as Mishal Husain repeated several times as she grilled Robert Jenrick with chilling savagery this morning. In her case ‘clarify’ means ‘crucify’, but my position is that I think dancing on the head of a pin to justify Dom’s shoogley defence is 100% counter-productive. 

I just think, in the scheme of things, the media should never never be allowed to play judge, jury and executioner, nor should the BBC be allowed to act as stand-in for H.M. opposition in the absence of a credible Labour Party.

What does the media, particularly Sky and the BBC, actually want? A Labour government? Do they really think that the same bunch that happily abandoned any principles they might have had to campaign for Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, would have handled the pandemic more competently? I bet they’re wholly relieved that they avoided that unexpected(!) gift of an escape so that they can continue sniping comfortably and sanctimoniously from the sidelines.

Just two relevant examples.

Eric Kaufmann UnHerd

We should be able to distinguish between various degrees of violation of norms, on the one hand, and sentencing, on the other. On the basis of these standards, and the precedent set to date in Anglo societies, he did wrong and should apologise but did not breach the threshold required for him to resign.

Who's to blame? Jonathan Eida

However, the real scandal in all of this fiasco has been the role of the media in deliberately misguiding the public, producing stories aimed to bring down the credibility of the Prime Minister and his office. It also seems, with many outlets, that they had some personal vendetta against Cummings, who himself has been hostile to them in the past.

Mishal Husain was outrageous. It’s not so much the insultingly rude, argumentative interruptions delivered in that exaggeratedly sugary, saccharine “You’re trying my patience” voice, - we’re almost used to that from Husain - it was the undisguised contempt for the government in her line of attack. All the gleeful announcement of that poll.

Distanced!

The media has taken on the role of Her Majesty’s official opposition, which is quite understandable, given that the Labour party is still in intensive care. A place-holding position, if you like.

I’ve just heard Victoria Derbyshire cornering Dan Hodges into defending the least credible parts of the Cummings tale, particularly, the dodgy eyesight driving test manoeuvre. What the Cummings family did was definitely not cricket, and being forced into the defensive on a dodgy wicket is where the BBC has the sensible people (who see this as a broader issue) over a barrel. A principle is involved!

The fact is that anyone who has to live and work in a multicultural metropolitan hell-hole would prefer to get away somewhere airy, especially if they were feeling apprehensive, under the weather and / or aware of the looming catastrophe that might be about to befall the human race. 

Dom obviously does think there’s one rule for “us” and another for “everybody else” because there is one rule for us and one for everybody else. There always was and always will be. And why not?

Not everyone is despised by the entire media class, for a start. Not everyone’s every move is scrutinised to within an inch of its life by a hostile press.

The media abides precisely by such double-standards, so it has no legitimate business criticising others for doing the same thing, especially as it does so with such disingenuous and politically motivated sanctimony. 

 When the media threatens “This story is not going to go away! Cummings should resign so that the government can get back to proper business” they really mean “we will continue to ferret out details, discrepancies and assorted minutiae about Dominic Cummings, therefore obstructing ‘proper business’ ourselves, and blaming Boris for ‘making Cummings the story’ until we’re distracted by the next scandal.

Here's Rod Liddle: Why couldn't someone ask Dominic cummings a decent question?

"Is it entirely beyond the wit of our gilded political correspondents to ask a different question to the one asked by the previous interlocutor? One after the other they lined up to ask Dominic Cummings the same question, over and over again. Does Peston think he’s asking it better than Kuenssberg? Does Beth Rigby think that asking it for a fourth time will be more elucidatory because she asked it with open contempt in her voice? And how magnificently puffed up they all were. When they were en route to the press conference did they all think the same thing: that they had the killer question and nobody else would have thought of it? Dimbojournalism.

Liddle hints that his article has been ‘edited’. Gosh!

Update:
This thread is full of fun.
I urge you to read Melanie Phillips too. Although I don’t feel motivated to defend Dom C’s conduct with as much conviction as others have done, the bigger picture - that the left-leaning anti-Brexit press is hell-bent on derailing the political destination chosen by the voters  - is the real scandal.

Remember; the news we get is written and dished up by journalists and media hacks, and interviews are conducted by them too. They’ve closed ranks, even many of the ‘good’ ones, as they would; and all we can do about it is sit and watch.

Here’s Maggie Foster miming a fine Sir Keir. Ah! Shame it won't play! (Oh yes it will! The problem must've been at my end)

Keir Me Out pic.twitter.com/5ncHqfYmBC

— Meggie Foster (@meggiefoster) May 25, 2020

Try this instead.

Who's the biggest liar?

We’re supposed to be talking about the BBC but I think Sky surpassed the BBC (and itself) on today's bias Olympics.

After Dominic Cummings’s press briefing/ debriefing Alastair Campbell was given free rein (uninterrupted) to spout utter bile.

"Campbell described Cummings’ statement as a “car crash” and said that it is “beyond belief” they are focused more on media reaction to Cummings than the coronavirus pandemic.

Hang on. Surely it’s the media that’s focused more on Cummings than on the coronavirus pandemic!

He explained: “Whether he was in breach of the lockdown rules, I don’t have any doubt about that whatsoever.

“And I think it is clear from the tone and tenor of all of the other questions, and I think they were reflecting... what viewers are thinking about the utter hypocrisy at the heart of this.

Hang on. I think some viewers might actually be thinking about the utter hypocrisy at the heart of the media?

“The other thing that is beyond belief here is that we are in the middle of crisis. The prime minister and the cabinet, their full attention should be on how to get us through this crisis, which they’ve handled so badly from start to finish.

Hang on, surely it’s the media that’s interfering with everyone’s attention on how to get us through this crisis?

“But they were all, all afternoon, sitting at their television looking at their Twitter feeds trying to work out what the right-wing media are saying.

The rest of Campbell's rant was plain nasty and doesn’t merit being broadcast at all.

“They are the most pathetic, craven bunch of people, and they do not deserve to be there.
“I am moving to the place where I sort of hope he stays, because they’re all done now for this if they’re not careful.
“So I don’t care what Johnson does, he’s been exposed for what he is, he’s a liar and a charlatan, and not up to the job.
“Cummings - you’ve seen what he is today.
He added: “I find it shameful that this is our government at this time of crisis. I find it utterly shameful.”

Whether or not Cummings believed he broke the guidelines (he did) he’s muddied the public health message and is distracting from the govt’s pandemic response. The only honourable thing to do would have been to apologise & resign. pic.twitter.com/UBvJwbsfjx

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) May 25, 2020

I mean——- just——- - - does this animated spitting-image-like portrayal of indignation really reflect public opinion? She complains that Cummings has been occupying the news agenda for the last three days and has "distracted the machinery of government from the most pressing issues". Well, whose fault is that madam? I think you'll find it's yours.

On the other hand: (Brendan O'Neill - Spectator /Facebook)

“The media’s Dominic Cummings story has completely collapsed. He did NOT go to Durham a second time, which was reported on the front page of the Sunday Mirror and the Observer. He did NOT have any physical contact with family members. The police did NOT talk to the Cummings family about the Covid lockdown guidelines. Cummings did NOT carry on doing things that everyone else had stopped doing — he even missed the funeral of his uncle who died from Covid. He did NOT leave his London home for leisure reasons — he left it because he was receiving death threats as a result of media demonisation. He was very ill, his wife was ill, and at one point his child was taken to hospital in an ambulance in Durham.
His family has had a really rough time and the media have told lie after lie about him. The scandal is not Cummings’ behaviour — it is the collapse of ethics and objectivity in the British media.

So who’s the biggest liar? Cummings or the media?

I didn’t think Dominic Cummings had a pair of completely water-tight legs to stand on, but looking at the way the media has inflated this increasingly irrelevant tale to bursting point, I think I’ll go with Brendan.

What the people want

I wish Andrew Marr would level with and just say “we’re campaigning to have Dominic Cummings sacked so that we can usher in that nice Sir Keir who can forensically nit-pick his way towards reversing Brexit.” (It’s what the people want.)

Did the BBC really invite Grant Shapps onto the A.M. show to discuss transport? 

I wish Maggie Foster would do one of her ten-times-more-entertaining-than-anything-the-BBC-has-produced-for-the-last-ten-years lip-sync impressions of Andrew Marr’s warm-up before the interview with Grant Shapps

 “This morning the Sunday Mirror and the Observer reported two sightings of Dominic Cummings out and about in the North East!” 

as well as the press briefing I watched the other day, which was 100% devoted to forcing that sacking/resignation.. (It’s what the country wants) and I’d quite like to see her facial expressions while emoting Sam Coates’s ranty question.

Last night TVs all over the country literally vibrated from Sonia Sodha’s indignant screeching. (about Dominic Cummings) When Dan Hodges is the one voice of sanity, one has to …..... I don't know, what?

And by travelling hundreds of miles to be close to extended family in case he needed childcare Cummings showed disregard for the safety of healthcare workers (NB I really *didn’t* say Cummings wanted them to die as I was then accused of!) pic.twitter.com/Gu1BydKNVz

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) May 23, 2020

 Oh! Look at Dan Hodges’s Twitter as people pile in with assorted *wrong* assumptions.

I think Andrew Marr and Tony Hall are terminally and irreversibly deluded. Tony Hall’s appearance alone is enough to make you wonder just what sort of a man is this? What does he look like? Contrary to popular belief, hair-dressing is not rocket science. 

Still after the youth market, Tony? I don’t think so mate.

Now for something completely different - (H/T Guest Who, B-BBC.) Jeremy Bowen has instigated a whole barrage of one-liner, virulently anti-Israel Tweets, merely by ‘remembering’ the incident that cemented his hatred for Israel.  Responses are always revealing. How the BBC sees fit to keep this individual in the influential position he’s in,  and still claim they represent ‘impartiality’ is beyond belief.

Rod Liddle has done a baffling about-turn. He thinks the BBC has had a good pandemic! Body hell! 

Does coronavirus affect people in more ways than we’re being told? 

Alarming news

I haven’t watched the BBC for a few days, but the radio alarm (literally) woke me up with the *alarming* news about Dominic Cummings. 

Having read the piece in the Spectator (£) written by the spouses of some of their regular columnists (I have to confess that I never knew he was Mary Wakefield’s other half) it seems that Dom isn’t the kind of unemotional automaton that the Boris-bashing press would have us believe; rather he seems (almost) a human being. 

I now suspect that he hadn’t behaved quite so outrageously and criminally as the BBC (and the press) obviously wishes he had, and that their determination to have him horse-whipped is politically motivated. Who’d've thunk it? 

I don’t remember the press ever going in such relentless pursuit of the arch manipulator and brain behind Jeremy Corbyn - that antisemitic Machiavellian rogue Seumas Milne. He seems to have got off lightly. Where is he now? I don’t know. Talking of ‘where are they now’, Rod Liddle has had an entertaining go at Shami Chakrabarti, which I mention solely so I can use the lovely photo to decorate this post.  

Sources

Don't open the champagne yet!

Andrew Neil sums up today's lead story in The Times as, "Hilarious! PM moves to protect BBC from his own government". 

It's all about those "sources" again. There are two of them in this latest article. One says, “The PM is not as gung ho on the licence fee as Dom. With Dom it’s ideological — he believes the licence fee should be scrapped. With the PM it’s more reform than revolution,” while the other one says that Boris is personally “cool” on the idea of scrapping the licence fee. 

Much less confusing is John Whittingdale telling The Critic: “There are large parts of the country that haven’t got broadband or indeed choose not to pay for it. You are turning round to all those households that don’t have fast broadband and saying, ‘You can’t get the BBC any more.’ Politically that would be utterly impossible. It is just not possible to make the BBC a voluntary subscription service for as long as it is broadcast on Freeview. We are some way off being able to switch off Freeview and put it all online.”

Meanwhile, the BBC and its allies, including The Guardian and plenty of celebrities, are on manoeuvres. From Labour to the Conservatives, the various posses of the corporation's political friends are also riding to its rescue, all guns blazing. As you've been noting in the comments, even its supposed political critics - Lord Adonis, Alastair Campbell & Co. - have given up their cynical pretence of being anti-BBC and are manning the barricades for 'the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation'. The war is far from over.

Get Cummings

The Mail on Sunday has another dramatic headline today: Man who claims Dominic Cummings assaulted him is set to be interviewed by Emily Maitlis in BBC documentary. 

The paper reports that BBC producers are set to interview a man who alleges that Mr Cummings "grabbed him by the lapels and pinned him to a wall" two decades ago after "an explosive radio debate". (What a scoop!) 

It will be part of an Emily-led documentary profile (hatchet job?) on Dominic Cummings. 

I'm sure this news will be read with interest, if little surprise, in Downing Street. They'd surely have expected that the BBC would be coming for Dom sooner or later. 

"Mission: attack"

It looks as if Dominic Cummings is "not bluffing". 

Tim Shipman of The Sunday Times has been told by "senior aides" to the Prime Minister that Downing Street is determined that the licence fee will be scrapped and the BBC turned into a subscription service. The BBC will be "pruned" and forced to sell off most of its 61 radio stations, with Radio 3 and Radio 4 preserved and protected. The BBC website will be scaled back, the BBC's TV channels reduced in number from the present ten, more money invested in the World Service, and BBC stars banned from "cashing in with lucrative second jobs". 

John Whittingdale will return to the Government to lead the charge, which "one source" described as "Mission: attack". 

"The PM is firmly of the view that there needs to be serious reform. He is really strident on this", a "source" says. 

Batten down the hatches, BBC!

"The plot to stop James Purnell becoming director-general of the BBC"

It looks as if Dominic Cummings is out to stop James Purnell from becoming the BBC's next DG. A "well placed Downing Street source" has told Robert Peston that if the BBC’s board and Sir David Clementi “try to put someone like Purnell in we will put in a chairman whose first job is to fire him…The likes of Purnell [would be] 'dead on arrival'”.

Having his say

A blogpost by Dominic Cummings has garnered a lot of attention today, understandably.

Among the many striking things in it was his idea that "many journalists wrongly looked at things like Corbyn’s Facebook stats and thought Labour was doing better than us". 

Which brings us to Newsnight's incoming policy editor, Lewis Goodall. Naturally, he's been having his say....but, then again, so have his have critics:

Lewis Goodall: (Holiday) reflections about Cummings blog:

-Wasn’t he leaving?

-Does PM understand what DC is doing? Understand that blog? After all DC doing it in BJ’s name.

-Should we be so interested in this man? If he’s so important, should there be more accountability in him and his actions?

Jill Rutter (Institute for Government): If Johnson ever turned up to a Liaison Cttee MPs could ask him... key point to remember is that Johnson has to be held to account for it....

Lewis Goodall: Agreed. Let’s see if it happens.

Political Commentary: Gosh, Lewis is raging.

Ron Swanson: Lewis is jealous...

Patriotic ally: A new year but you're still engaging in activism not journalism I see...