The Sunday Papers

 

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.

You are what you Tweet

Why does Michael Gove and his wife own a copy of a book by David Irving, one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers on earth https://t.co/53xI6UFyBa

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) May 3, 2020

Talking of bookcases and their contents (as we were the other day) a Twitter spat is raging over the contents of a bookcase in the Sarah Vine - Michael Gove household.

The Twitterati is (are (?)) cruelly critical of the preponderance of political biographies, autobiographies and memoirs and furious about the inclusion in the Vine/Gove library of Atlas Shrugged. 

Owen Jones is gloating over the sighting of a copy of a book by 'holocaust denier and discredited historian' David Irving.

Is Sarah Vine deliberately flouting her bookcase now for the sole purpose of provoking Owen Jones? (confidently assuming he’ll hoist himself on his own opportunistic petard) 

Be careful not to be too smug though. Those books are suspiciously pristine and organised. Normal bookcases are higgledy-piggledy and don’t look like libraries. Or do they? Maybe it’s just my house.

Sarah Vine’s Twitter thread is ablaze.

Update: More exciting news on the bookcase front. Mary Harrington in UnHerd

Here is a taster: :

The ballyhoo over Michael Gove’s bookshelf, as shared by Sarah Vine, has rapidly sorted into two camps representing the two familiar varieties of liberalism that make up the contemporary culture war. 

On the one hand, stand the defenders of Freeze Peach. I haven’t checked recently, but if Brendan O’Neil and Toby Young haven’t yet published articles defending Gove’s bookshelf in the name of Freeze Peach it’s only because they’re still working on them. On the other, we find the usual proponents of Banning Bad Ideas In The Name Of Progress. 

So far, so predictable. But both sides in this stupid argument are barking up the wrong tree. The real, hidden culture war is over the extent to which it’s proper to arrange our bookshelves as an expression of our public selves, and to what extent this is an act of insufferable vanity. 

On the one side are the people who carefully arrange the most recondite titles on their sitting room bookshelves, to impress visitors with their highbrow interests, while the trash paperbacks get tucked away upstairs. Anyone who does this is guaranteed to scan your bookshelves furtively when visiting and judge you on what they see.

Off Beam

The limitations of our comments system make it awkward to insert direct hyperlinks, so following a comment (by Anonymous)  - and for clarity, I'm posting the Government's rebuttal of the Sunday Times article below the fold. 

Michael Gove described the article as 'off beam." The Government sets out the 'claims' made by the Sunday Times and offers its 'responses' in full.  

Read more...

End times

Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears

Failings in February may have cost thousands of liveshttps://t.co/90fMvq20O5

— The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) April 18, 2020

Big splash in the Sunday Times. Get Boris.

A scoop! A day by day; hour by hour diary of the government’s failures and gross mishandling of the pandemic. Boris’s selfish, narcissistic, stubborn deafness! His cavalier behaviour! Hundreds, nay, thousands of unnecessary deaths! Boris’s negligence! The government’s ineptitude!

The keyboard warriors had already been busy, piling in below the line by about 6:30 am! Get Boris!

The whole www blogosphere is full of people (like me) opining on stuff we know very little about. (But how could we? We know only what we’re told.)

“So whom” did no-one anywhere suggest “would have handled the crisis better?” Jeremy Corbyn? Decisive and presidential? He’d still have been ‘having a conversation’.

Andrew Marr, on behalf of the Labour Party, massaged Anneliese Dodds gently through her sermon.

Michael Gove had just been con-fronted by Sophy Ridge with the narrow-eyed stare that makes her look intense.

Marr’s fixers put him in the last slot where the imminent danger of ‘running out of time’ usually adds an extra frisson of suspense. No-one could have been surprised by the tedious predictability of the questioning - the likelihood of Marr getting a sudden surge of inspiration and imagination is next to nil.

“Did he or did he not miss five cobra meetings?” squeaked Marr, the air of triumph amplified by his extra-reedy tone of voice.

So pleased was he with this question that the moment Gove began his answer, Marr had already begun a series of ‘interruption’ noises. Nevertheless, Gove battled through the distraction with stoicism and forbearance.

“Did we not send billions of tons of our PPE to China?” continued Marr. But he had already stopped listening and concerned himself with the Marr Show’s rapidly approaching end time.

She's. Not. Wrong.

Mrs. Michael. Gove. (are we allowed to say that?) Isn't. Holding. Back. Tonight:

Sarah Vine: This. Audience. Is. A. Total. Labour. Stitch. Up. Well done BBC, you've really outdone yourself this time.

She's. Not. Wrong.

Friday Night Smorgasbord

I

During last night's Newsnight, while interviewing Greg Hands MP, Kirsty Wark asked: 

Before we finish Michael Gove is reported to have said "the decision to leave the EU was on a par with the fall of the Berlin Wall and East Germany's quest for freedom". What's your response to that? 

It now turns out that by 'reported' Kirsty actually meant 'rumoured on Twitter by pro-EU partisans'.

Douglas Murray has the whole fascinating story of this Twitter-facilitated, politically-motivated fake news story over at the Spectator - and, even better, he's released a recording of the whole Michael Gove speech to prove it. 

The guilty parties are ex-BBC Labour MP Ben Bradshaw and one of the BBC's favourite experts on extremism (far-right and jihadi), Dr Peter Neumann of King's College London. 

The former had claimed that Mr Gove had been heckled at the event without informing his readers that he'd been that very heckler (!), while the latter had tweeted:

So here's Michael Gove standing next to Luftwaffe band on Day of German Unity, telling German audience that decision to leave EU on par with fall of Berlin Wall and East Germans' quest for freedom. Shouts from audience: "Nonsense".

That tweet certainly got gullible Simon Schama & Co. squawking en masse: "Obscene. EU equated with USSR! Just vile. How can he sleep?" frothed Prof. Schama while the Observer's Nick Cohen fumed, "The Cold War ended when walls were torn down. Brexit builds them up again. Michael Gove can't spot the difference." David Lammy leapt aboard the bandwagon too. (Update - Nick Cohen, as I'd have hoped he would, has backtracked saying "It seems the professor was confused, to put the kindest possible constrcution on it".)

The audio released by Douglas (and the accompanying transcript) proves that 'the quote' used by Kirsty Wark was not a quote at all. Michael Gove didn't say what Dr. Neumann said he'd said. 

At all. Not a bit of it. It was all utterly fake news.

Scary to think of it but without that pesky audio Messrs Bradshaw and Neumann might well have gotten away with it.

Now, to his credit (though to the annoyance of others), I'll just note here that the BBC's Evan Davis protested commented negatively and prominently on Dr Neumann's less-than-accurate tweet:

Amazed to see this still getting so many retweets and likes. Everybody should read the transcript and make up their own mind. But I for one saw this tweet and then read the speech and felt Peter Neumann had totally misinformed me as to what had been said.

So will there be fewer invites from the BBC for Dr Neumann now?

*******

II

Douglas Murray, following his audio-and-transcript-led exposure of George Eaton of the New Statesman's shocking misbehaviour towards Prof. Roger Scruton is becoming quite the crusader for truth. Good on him!

*******

III

Talking of exposures by released audio or video....

As noted on the Sweenexit thread and the Open Thread, it really does look as if Tommy Yaxley-Robinson has triumphed, game, set and match, in his war with the BBC's John Sweeney (a war the latter launched).

Tommy's Panodrama, whatever you might have thought of it at the time, really does appear to have (a) scruppered the BBC's intended Panorama hatchet job on him and (b) directly caused BBC star reporter John Sweeney to make his exit from the corporation (as per a not-available-online piece by Matthew Moore of The Times).

The UK media's reporting of this remarkable turn of events is fascinating in its near-absence. Silence has well and truly fallen. The Independent's Lizzie Dearden is a rare exception. Her not-entirely-factually-accurate report on the story actually manages to be quite balanced.

I do agree that it was the "bloody woofter" comment that must have got John Sweeney into particular trouble at the BBC. 

*******

IV

It's been another bad day for the BBC. 

You have to go 34 paragraphs into the BBC News website's main report on the story to reach the bit where the retired judge slams the BBC for its involvement in the Carl Beech/'VIP paedophile gang' story, but at least they didn't 'forget to mention it'.

It should surely have been mentioned (if only trailed) further up the article though, and the BBC ought to be sharply questioned over this.

(Where's John Humphrys when you need him?). 

Retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques is damning about the BBC's involvement, with  BBC reporter Tom Symonds receiving the lion's share of the criticism 

The judge said the BBC had "fed information" to 'Nick '(Carl Beech):

The showing of the picture of Martin Allen to ‘Nick’ by Tom Symonds of the BBC was unhelpful to the integrity of the investigation.

The photographic identification by Tom Symonds was fundamentally flawed and would not be admitted in a court.  

It's complicated stuff, but (especially in the wake of the Lord McAlpine scandal which saw a BBC director general resign) it's really quite something (again) that the BBC fell flat on its face once more over the issue of paedophilia' (following the Savile scandal)...before then partly redeeming itself via, of all programmes. Panorama, which first raised huge questions about 'Nick'. 

What will happen to Tom Symonds over this? Will he be joining John Sweeney? (Joint leaving do? JS to buy the drinks?)

*******

V

My Twitter feed today was especially aghast at a woman in the audience at an Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez meeting passionately calling for babies to be eaten as a necessary step to counteract climate change.

By all recent accounts it was a hoax (channelling Swift's A Modest Proposal), but (like in the early days of Titania McGrath) a lot of people fell for it - from both sides (including a surprising number of my favourites on Twitter, though I won't name names!).

Gosh darn it, even Sky reported it straight too.

By the looks of it, the BBC held off until they could safely brand it a "far-right" stunt - as they duly did a couple of hours ago.

What's so intriguing here is how Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez reacted to the woman in the audience's question. She seemed to take it at face value, didn't take issue with the woman and was nice to her.

That has raised eyebrows.

And my eyebrows were raised by how the BBC edited the exchange.

Watch the full exchange here (via Sky):

A woman who attended, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's town hall meeting, urges the eating of babies as a necessary step in the fight against climate change.

Watch more videos from Sky News here: https://t.co/hhDQuPJRZP pic.twitter.com/WbbEc9uTXk

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 4, 2019

And then watch the BBC's editer version. It removes the main bits where, to  critics, AO-C looks as it she's falling for the hoax and pandering to the woman.

Of course, she might not have been doing any such thing, just diffusing the situation gently and skilfully.

But why shorten it when the whole exchange lasted less than two minutes? Was it some (agenda-driven) attempt to protect Ms Ocasia-Cortez? 

Normal business resumes

It's himself

I

"It's like being in a plane, assured by the pilot we're on course for a smooth landing, while the cabin crew warn all the passengers to adopt the brace position"

My wind cooling my broth 

Would blow me to an ague, when I thought 

What harm a wind too great at sea might do. 

I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, 

But I should think of shallows and of flats, 

And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand...

Talking of whom...

Andrew Marr was back this morning and his introduction began as follows:

Good morning and well done for getting up!  

All that energy poor Rob Burley put into explaining why the unpopular move to 10 o'clock for the last series was actually a wonderful, well-thought-out idea, and yet here it was back in it's old spot again!

Andrew then delivered his first September sermon:

Parliament's back this week, briefly, before it's put into cold storage by Boris Johnson's government. He insists he's trying to get a deal with the EU, but he faces sabotage from rebel MPs. Brussels still says there are no signs of a deal. And in the meantime, we are all being told to prepare for no deal in a massive new government campaign, under the headline Get Ready. It's like being in a plane, assured by the pilot we're on course for a smooth landing, while the cabin crew warn all the passengers to adopt the brace position.  

He then introduced his main political guests, pre-announcing his 'gotcha' moment for Mr Gove (which we'll return to later, as Mr Gove tried to 'gotcha' The Andrew Marr Show back!):

I'm going to be talking to Michael Gove, the Cabinet minister in charge of no-deal preparations, who told me earlier in the summer he was against proroguing parliament. And to Sir Keir Starmer, the Shadow Brexit Secretary, who spent all summer planning how to stop no deal, though he hasn't, in truth, much time left now. Two men, perhaps, better placed than anyone else to answer the simple question - what happens now?  

Then came a promise of disinterested experts:

We are going to try to explain and analyse what is going on during this extraordinary political episode. Today, I'm going to be talking to the former Black Rod, David Leakey, and a former clerk in the House of Commons, Hannah White, trying to understand what's possible for Parliament and what isn't. What's outside the Constitution? Is this a coup? Might a no-deal Brexit be stopped in the courts and what the Queen can be reasonably expected to do herself?  

Did you know that David Leakey used to Director General of the European Union Military Staff, reporting to the EU's High Representative (aka foreign minister)? I didn't until I Googled him. Wonder if that helps explain why he sounded rather sniffy about Boris's actions? Or is that too cynical? As for Dr. Hannah White, the expert from the Institute for Government, her views on the matter were known before her invitation to appear (one presumes), given that she's written pieces saying that proroguing Parliament would be "undemocratic" and "deeply troubling", so she came pre-armed with a strong opinion on the matter. 

Experts

Then it was onto the paper reviewers - and we had a less-spotted male of the species on the sofa this morning:

And on the news review, we've got two of Fleet Street's editors, Fraser Nelson from The Spectator and Alison Phillips from the Daily Mirror.  

It was Alison's debut, and she took to it like a drake to water. 

And Andrew's introduction ended with a personal statement:

If, in an hour's time, you don't understand more, then we, but in particular I, will have failed you rather badly. 

A worthy intention, but I think ITN's famous newsreader Alistair Stewart probably put it best when he tweeted:

Post-'Marr', albeit on catch-up, I am as clear as the re-heated porridge Michael Gove referred to on Brexit, No Deal, Prorogation and a General Election.

Likewise, sir!

*******

II

"a huge amount of anger and outrage right across the country"

My Twitter feed deliberately isn't a bubble but I did get the sense from it that the numbers protesting on the streets yesterday across the country were a good deal smaller than previous such protests, so I was a little surprised by this intervention from Andrew this morning: 

Andrew Marr: Meanwhile, out on the streets, a huge amount of anger and outrage right across the country. Small towns as well as great cities.  

Alison Phillips: Absolutely everywhere. This week, protest as far afield as Leamington spa, Doncaster, Dundee. Extraordinary scenes yesterday and this is not the end of it. There are talks about transport being closed down, towns and cities coming to a halt. Clearly a lot of very angry people.  

Andrew Marr: I spotted a little placard saying "Chichester is cross", and when Chichester is cross we know something extraordinary is happening. 

Really? Or are they "evidence of a twitching corpse"?

Not angry

*******

III

"All across Britain..."

Now. as for that 'falling-out' between Michael Gove and Andrew Marr, here's a transcript:

Andrew Marr: And yet here come the bet you would expect, I suspect, which is what you told me in June. You said in June that proroguing would be absolutely wrong. Let's remind ourselves:

Clip of Michael Gove on the Marr show in June: We are a parliamentary democracy and suspending or, as the constitutional experts call it, proroguing parliament, in order to try to get no deal through I think would be wrong....[clip jumps]... I think it would be wrong for many reasons. I think it would not be true to the best traditions of British democracy. 

All across Britain people agree with Michael Gove in June and disagree and are confused and bamboozled by Michael Gove in September.  

Michael Gove: All across Britain people are wondering why you didn't show the question before that answer... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) Well, the question did not mention the 31st of October.  

Michael Gove: No, no, no. The question did actually mention October, because it was in the context of a debate happening during the leadership election. And there was an idea going round at the time which you put to me, which was that Parliament shouldn't sit at all during October, that it shouldn't sit at all before we left on the 31st of October, and I specifically said that I thought that would be wrong. That is not what is happening now. And I think it is critically important that on behalf of, not just of myself, but other politicians who have been misrepresented that...  

Andrew Marr: Oh!!! 

Michael Gove: No... Absolutely, Andrew. Because there was a live debate at the time... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) This is a distinction without a difference. You're treating people as fools here. 

Michael Gove: No, there's a huge difference. There's a huge difference, Andrew, and it is disingenuous... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) I...I...I...Disengenuous or not. I thought... 

Michael Gove: I'm not making a personal point. But it is critical that people realise that there is a big difference. There has to be prorogation before a Queen's speech... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) No, but you're moving crucial parliamentary days just before this. I thought...I thought when you said "proroguing parliament in order to try to get no deal through, I think would be wrong", you meant "proroguing parliament in order to get a no deal through would be wrong". I thought you meant what you said.  

Michael Gove: Yes, but you haven't actually revealed what you said beforehand, which was in the context of that leadership debate. And I think it's important because a number of my colleagues have been consistently misrepresented in this respect. 

So, who was being disingenuous here?

Andy and Mike 

Well, here's the programme's own transcript of the relevant bit of the June edition in full:

Andrew Marr: So what do you say to your colleagues who say well there’s an obvious answer to this problem. Don’t let parliament sit in October. Then we get out, parliament can’t stop us getting out, we prorogue. What about that? Dominic Raab suggested that, Esther McVey was saying the same thing on this programme.  

Michael Gove: I don’t think that is the right thing to do. I think that we live in a parliamentary democracy. Parliament must vote in order to ensure that we leave the European Union. My view is that almost everyone in parliament voted to trigger Article 50. There are some honourable exceptions like Ken Clarke. When they voted to trigger Article 50 they voted to say that we are leaving the European Union. MPs must honour that referendum result. But we must also respect the fact that we are a parliamentary democracy. And suspending or, as the Constitutional experts call it, proroguing parliament in order to try to get no deal through I think would be wrong. 

Andrew Marr: Do you think it would be wrong because it would drag the Queen into the centre of this controversy?  

Michael Gove: I think it will be wrong for many reasons. I think it would not be true to the best traditions of British democracy. I argued that we should leave the European Union because I wanted us to take back control of our democracy and that means putting parliament at the centre of decision making. I took sacrifices in that campaign, make sacrifices in that campaign in order to secure a restoration of additional powers to parliament and I think it is important that we respect that. 

Hmm. I think Andrew Marr couldn't quite recall the question he'd put back in June and floundered somewhat as a result but reading the transcript it's pretty clear that Mr Gove - despite having a point about the context of the question put to him first there was being somewhat disgenguous given that the points he went on to make in his original answers clearly referred to the idea of prorogation more generally. So he was rather trying to take us for fools there, wasn't he? (How unlike a politician!).

Shome mishtake

What do you think? I’m starting to think that anyone who has ever given up smoking has no business carping about hypocrisy over peoples’ past mistakes. Mishtakes.

(Since you ask, an impending consultation with a rapier-tongued obstetrician was the pivot that turned me into a non-smoker. Decades ago, that was, and I haven’t lit-up from then on. However, for years I was plagued with dreams that I had ‘caved’. These dreams were ‘real’, credible and devilish, as I definitely hadn’t.)

Anyway, I understand that the BBC is rife with coke-sniffing. I thought that was common knowledge, but it could just be malicious gossip. So it seems hypocritical, doesn’t it, that Andrew Marr would devote about 80% of his interrogation of Michael Gove to that topic when some of us might have been more interested in the detail of his plan to swap VAT for purchase tax. Anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to be involved with the bureaucracy of completing those wretched VAT returns and the like will want to know. 

One might have spotted that Marr allowed his interview with that patronising Corbynite bore Gardiner to over-run, and consequently impinge on Gove’s allotted time.

Andrew Marr was so well-primed on Gove’s mistake and so unwilling to let his apology suffice, that one couldn’t help comparing it with that other abomination. Peterborough. 

It seems that Marr’s research on Ms Forbes’s ‘mistake’ was confined to her ‘liking’ the one offending Tweet. He didn’t show any interest in or knowledge of the rest of her shortcomings, namely the abundance of other indications that she is indeed as antisemitic as the rest of the Corbynists, and that she is thick as a brick. As we used to say of the BBC itself, it’s either ignorance or malevolence.

Why would Marr be so willing to take Forbes’s belated ‘apology’ at face value, when he stubbornly refused to accept the one he repeatedly forced from Michael Gove?

As for the leadership stakes, the jury’s out. 

I fear that the MSM has kiboshed Gove’s prospects, which (personality-wise) weren’t looking too promising from the get-go. 

Jeremy Hunt came across better than I’d thought (on Sky) but his opposition to Trump’s position on the Iran nuclear deal put me off, as I’d like to know why anyone would support Obama’s pro-Iran, anti-Israel fiasco of a temporary deal, which involved abandoning economic sanctions just as they were beginning to take effect, while funding Iran's terror by proxy and their nuclear development programme bound for fruition just beyond an increasingly imminent time window. 

I think Boris’s decision to lie low, media-wise, is sensible but not helpful - the media is so vicious and unreasonable that their meddling is the most negative force we’re facing, barring a Corbyn gov’ment.

Michael Gove: the speech

Everyone else has done it so we might as well publish the barnstormer we enjoyed yesterday. Funnily enough, the BBC chose instead to feature Tom Watson’s effort, over which the spectre of an enormous  ‘elephant’ loomed.

I have to admit that many of my political and philosophical positions are primarily emotional. For example, I’ve loathed Corbers ever since he hove into view alongside his Judeophobic colleagues, like, say Andy Slaughter and, I don’t know, Chris Mullin. That was long ago. Back when the prospect of such a wrong-headed individual becoming leader of the Labour Party was simply unthinkable.

But I’ve admired Gove, particularly are reading his 2016 Times piece (£) on antisemitism, way before the issue became a hot topic. 

From an emotional angle, admittedly, I think the label ‘back-stabber’ is unfair because I can very well understand his misgivings about Boris’s leadership potential and his reluctance to be closely associated with what he foresaw as a potential accident-waiting-to-happen. With hindsight, it may or may not have been a big mistake, but I like to believe it was sincerely motivated rather than malevolent. 

One might consider how Tom Watson must feel, knowing that despite losing an elephantine amount of weight he’s still shackled to another humungous elephant.

Andrew Marr, Michael Gove and Viktor Orban

"OK, you're trying to get off Viktor Orban, and I can exactly see why. Let's remind ourselves who he is. He is a very, very authoritarian right-wing leader of Hungary. He's called migrants "poison" and Muslims "invaders". He's widely regarded as anti-Semitic, for good reasons. He's made it a criminal offence for lawyers to help asylum seekers, and he's targeted the media, the judiciary and NGOs in a very,very aggressive way. This is the man that your party in the European Parliament has decided to support. Why?"  

Re The Andrew Marr Show, there were plenty of left-wing people on Twitter complaining that there was "no mention" of Tory MEPs voting against the European Parliaments censure motion against Viktor Orban's Hungary. ("Usual Tory bias on this programme", "BBC bias in a nutshell", etc).

And then, after they'd all sent out their tweets, what came along? Yes, a very big "mention" of that very thing.

Oddly, none of them graciously withdrew their earlier tweets.

Here's a transcript. 

As well as being interesting for Michael Gove's attempts to deal with the question, it's also interesting for Andrew Marr's description of the Hungarian leader (quoted separately, in italics, above). He certainly didn't sit on the fence:

Andrew Marr: There is one bit of really good political news for the government from Europe this morning, one leader who said, "We would like a fairer Brexit because we love the British and have always cooperated well. You deserve a good deal". Are you pleased to have the support of Viktor Orban of Hungary?  

Michael Gove: I think the truth is that there are actually a swathe of EU leaders who want the best possible relationship... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) Let's stick with that one.  

Michael Gove: Well, I think one of the things is that I'm not a...what's the word?...It's not for me to rank a league table of EU leaders and to say 'that one is my favourite' or 'that one I have less time for' because I believe in cooperative diplomacy, I believe in generosity of spirit towards our EU partners and I would say that there have been a range of EU leaders, all of whom have said they want to ensure that they have the most positive relationship afterwards. Indeed, Michel Barnier himself said that he wants to have a relationship with the UK which is the best relationship between the EU and any third country.  

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) OK, you're trying to get off Viktor Orban, and I can exactly see why. Let's remind ourselves who he is. He is a very, very authoritarian right-wing leader of Hungary. He's called migrants "poison" and Muslims "invaders". He's widely regarded as anti-Semitic, for good reasons. He's made it a criminal offence for lawyers to help asylum seekers, and he's targeted the media, the judiciary and NGOs in a very,very aggressive way. This is the man that your party in the European Parliament has decided to support. Why?  

Michael Gove: No. That's not true and...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) But it is true.   

Michael Gove: No, it's not true Andrew and it's critically important that we realise this. There was a vote in the European Parliament but it's a long-standing principle of a number of MEPs from different countries and from different parties not to believe that the European Parliament should interfere in or censure the internal democracy of a particular country. Now you or I... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) Even one engaging in this kind of thing?... 

Michael Gove: Just one second...You or I might have particular views about other countries but the European Parliament and those within it, British MEPs and others, believe that that's the wrong way of expressing criticism. But there's another thing as well... My view is the British are traditionally accused of playing divide and rule and picking off individual countries... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) This is a man who is so illib... 

Michael Gove: (interrupting) Sorry, I'm not going to play that game and I'm not going to go down the route of...You know, I have views... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) OK. What are they? What are they?  

Michael Gove: ...and you do as well. I not going to be drawn on my views about individual European leaders.  

Andrew Marr: Because you need his support?  

Michael Gove: No, because I think it would be wrong for me as a time when we need solidarity against a number of different threats - you mentioned anti-Semitism - we need to make sure that our voice is clear, our position on these issues is absolutely clear and resonant, and I don't believe that individual criticisms of the kind that you are understandably tempting me to make necessarily help us in ensuring we get both solidarity on the issues that count and the best deal for Britain as we leave the European Union. 

Andrew Marr: I suppose the point I'm making, in a circuitous way, is that we have had a lot of conversations in this country about anti-Semitism in British politics and Jeremy Corbyn has been under a lot of criticism for that. Here you are as a party voting alongside the most prominent anti-Semitic politician, xenophobic politician, somebody who, as I say, has described migrants as "poison", and that's been the Conservative Party's... 

Michael Gove: (interrupting) No... 

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) You voted with him.  

Michael Gove: No, it's not the case we voted that we voted to support him. It's the case that the MEPs declined on this occasion, as they have on a number of occasions in the past, and there were people from a variety of different parties and a variety of different countries that declined to do so. This is very, very far from endorsing or supporting the position he takes.  

Andrew Marr: So why does your good friend, long time friend, Danny Finkelstein, Lord Finkelstein, a Conservative peer, describe this vote as "very distressing" and "a shameful thing to have happened"?  

Michael Gove: Well, I have enormous respect for Danny and I wouldn't criticise Danny. 

I don't think Andrew Marr and Viktor Orban will be exchanging Christmas cards this year.

Partisan agenda

There was an astonishing interview on the Today Programme just after the eight o’clock news.  In the studio with John Humphrys were Michael Gove and Diane Abbott. If you didn’t hear it, you should listen here. Go on.

The topic was immigration and in particular those contentious targets. You know, the targets that led to a small fleet of innovative “go-home” buses intended to generate a hostile atmosphere for illegal immigrants, who would obviously take one look and immediately flock to the airport in droves or drive to the airport in flocks.

John Humphrys was super-indignant and incredulous that the Home Secretary hadn’t seen the memo and/or didn’t know about the targets, especially after the Guardian had got hold of some damning evidence or other. He was so incensed that he started speaking in that staccato way of his, where each word is enunciated separately as if someone had scattered full-stop-confetti over his head. But Michael Gove wasn’t having any of it. 

“John, John! You’re making yourself an instrument of a highly partisan campaign against a highly effective Home Secretary.” 

Way to go! And it was followed shortly after by:

“John, John, in your desire to maintain the prosecutorial stance in the service of a partisan agenda..”

“You’ve gotta withdraw that!” said John, helplessly. Realising he had to let it go, he said, “I’ll let it go”.

I had almost forgotten that Diane Abbott was there, so quietly and patiently had she been waiting.

All she wanted to do was relate the tragic cases of Windrush grannies who have been herded into deportation camps in droves. (or driven in herds) Humph must have been conscious that he’d better grill the shadow Home Secretary as fiercely as he’d tried to grill the Gover, otherwise, that immaculate impartiality of his, which he had reminded us of moments earlier, might be called into question. 

However, he couldn’t quite raise the same passion with Diane and resorted to telling her to concentrate on the targets rather than describing some non-specific Windrush cases in an emotive fashion. She accused the government of deliberately confusing illegal immigrants with the Windrush generation. Deliberately!  It really was an astonishing interview for oh so many reasons. 

However, the bottom line is, and I’m straying from the astonishing interview now, but I think I need to ask… where can we see some facts? Like, for example, are there any statistics on erroneously deported individuals? What became of them? Can they be compensated? How about the people that were not deported but erroneously disenfranchised and prevented from working, driving and being treated on the NHS. Are there any statistics on these cases, and can they be compensated or is it now too late? 

I think we need some idea of the scale of the problem rather than hearing Diane Abbott emoting and hurling out innuendos. That’s one thing. Then there’s the matter of how difficult was it for the Windrush people to regularise their status? Because obviously, some have done so.   

This whole business is far too reminiscent of a parallel scenario, where the pro-Palestinian movement is generally far more concerned with attacking Israel than helping the Palestinians.  The politicised agenda we have here means that Labour seems far more concerned with calling for Amber Rudd’s resignation than actually helping the people they say they’re concerned about. 

Almost on cue, moments after that interview, John Humphrys spoke to a very satisfied customer. A member of the Windrush generation who had received his certification and was a very happy bunny. 

The Labour Party is mired in antisemitism. One would think they’d be embarrassed about calling for a symbolic resignation when the bleeding obvious applies to their own leadership a thousand times over. 

More Holiday Madness

S’funny what people get up to on their hols. Colluding with foreign governments, drug-smuggling, trying to bring down the Ayatollahs’ government while slapping on the suntan lotion. They’re all at it. 

As Craig has rightly pointed out, Alan at Biased-BBC recalls a time - it seems like a lifetime, but it’s only about ten days ago - when no-one saw anything provocative in someone taking some holiday-time-out to do a spot of teaching.

One minute it was a harmless-sounding sideline during a family visit, next minute it was a pretext for the mad mullahs to up the ante and double up on the incarceration.

The bit about teaching journalists turned out to be a figment of Boris’s lack of imagination. However, even if she had been, teaching journalists is not exactly spying. 

I mean, isn’t accusing a visitor to Iran of ‘being a spy’ kind of par for the course? Especially when they hold  a British / Iranian passport. You know what they’re like. It’s okay, it’s their culture;  incarceration is the inevitable consequence of picking a bad holiday destination.

Charging her with spying and locking her up is still not actually Boris’s fault. The Boris-bashers disagree. Boris, they insist, should have foreseen that the mad mullahs would use his clumsy “misspeak” as a pretext for doubling the length of her sentence, barmy as this is.

They argue that “teaching journalism” (mysteriously upgraded to “training journalists”) was bound to infuriate the mad mullahs, and Boris should have known better; and they do have a point, even if we have to ignore the possibility that going to Iran for a holiday is a provocation in itself.

But so incensed with Boris are they that they’ve lost sight of the fact that, as Michael Gove reminded us on the Marr show, that whatever Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing on her hols, she was neither spying nor trying to bring the Iranian government down. So charging her with spying and locking her up  at all, let alone for goodness knows how long,  is completely unjustifiable.

Her husband is adamant that she was merely visiting family, which invites the Rice-Davies response, but the government’s (and the BBC’s) official line (that his word must be taken at face value) equally qualifies for a robust “They would, wouldn’t they.”

Obviously Andrew Marr deliberately tried to force Michael Gove into a no-win corner with his carefully phrased question:  “What was she doing?” and obviously if Gove had said he knew she was on holiday it immediately throws Boris under a bloody great red bus. He had little alternative but to say, quite truthfully, that he didn’t know, (How could he know?) Seemingly cornered; but with one bound he set himself free. He said her husband is the person who should know, and he has said she was. Nimble thinking macht frei.

The next thing we know is that the BBC has plucked an honest answer to a tricksy, intentionally  provocative question from its proper context and headlined with it mercilessly all day.  

As for the three-way Twitter conversation that Craig has highlighted - (has James O”Brien been dumped? ) having a go at Andy Marr sounds like sour grapes.

Tom Newton-Dunn takes a swipe at Boris and Gove, bagging two for the price of one. 

As for Marr’s failed attempt to force Gove to denounce either Boris or the government, Craig’s bf. Rob Burley plays “innocent face”. 

Oh dear. The response was 'surprising to many'? To the BBC, maybe. They should have known that Marr is no match for Gove. 

No matter. The BBC took it out of context and ran with it anyway.

Nazanin

Alan at Biased BBC has ferreted out a 1st November report from the Independent that, in the light of everything that's followed on the Boris/Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe story, makes for fascinating reading. 

It shows how uncontroversial and widely-welcomed Mr Johnson's remarks were until, a few days later, they suddenly became controversial and widely-reviled. 

The game-changer was an Iranian judicial decision (if it can be dignified with such a term) to bring her back to court on the basis of Boris's remarks. 

Partisans here are getting fired up, and - weirdly - Brexit seems to be the dividing line. 

Michael Gove has now found himself attracting flak too for his comments about the case on this morning's Andrew Marr Show. Mr Gove was defending Boris Johnson and, in doing so and in responding to a question from Andrew Marr ("What was she doing when she went to Iran?"), replied "I don't know". And when pressed ("You say that you don’t know what she was doing. Her husband is very clear that she was there on holiday with her child") replied, "Well, in that case I take exactly her husband’s assurance in that regard". And when Andrew pressed again ("So was she training journalists?") replied, "Well, her husband said that she was there on holiday, and her husband is the person who should know."

To some he was merely being honest; to others he was compounding the lie about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. 

The fired-up Brexit Partisan brigades then began amplifying it all - "You're jumping on an anti-Brexit bandwagon", "No, you're a bunch of nasty right-wingers determined to protect Johnson at all costs", etc.

And the BBC, whose lead reporters have been vocal and unequivocal (especially on Twitter) in their criticism of Boris Johnson over this, splashed their news website for a while today with:

Ah for the days when the likes of Lord Palmerston could order in British forces and daringly rescue distressed damsels like Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe from the clutches of foreign tyrants!

I do hope this turns out well for her and her family. And soon.

*******

Meanwhile, on the 'complaints from both sides' front, here's James O'Brien - occasional Newsnight presenter - complaining about The Andrew Marr Show, and the programme's editor (as he does) then responding to that criticism:

James O'Brien doesn't strike me as the sort who'll ever let someone else have the last word, so this is bound to go on until even Rob loses the will to live and gives JO'B the final say.