Getting their own voices back

Dr Philip Cunliffe, Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, is someone I follow on Twitter. Being a man of the Left he naturally reads The New Statesman. He wasn't impressed by one of its latest pieces though:

Philip Cunliffe: Perhaps you thought the Ukraine war was about defending sovereignty and national independence? It's actually about us Rejoining the EU, according to this latest Andrew Marr piece. They will never accept democracy went against them.

Andrew Marr's piece begins like this: 

In the earthquake caused by this war, a grand reshaping around the world, relations between Britain and the EU must again become our biggest near-at-hand argument.

Almost nobody in mainstream British politics wants to talk about this. For Brexiteers any other issue may, in theory, be reopened, from tax promises to Scottish independence; but Brexit is a sacrosanct and holy victory that must remain forever untouched. Pro-European politicians largely agree, although out of fear of English nationalism rather than pride.

Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, this cannot be allowed to stand. 

A couple of responses to Dr Cunliffe's tweet may strike a chord with you:

Ike Ijeh: Well I never! It's such a good job the BBC is impartial. If it wasn't I would literally have had *no idea* Marr held these views until he left!

Jonny Austin: I know. Its shocking that Fogarty, Mair & now Marr move from the BBC to LBC & their opinions are centre-left anti-Brexit. Almost like we knew.

...to which can be added the names Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel no doubt. 

More from Andrew Marr

More from Andrew Marr on leaving the BBC and joining the left-wing New Statesman as it's chief political commentator:

It’s a huge privilege to be joining one of the great titles of British political journalism, the paper of Orwell, Priestley and Ali Smith — I grew up learning how to think by reading Christopher Hitchens and other NS writers — and I’m thrilled to be there as part of my new life which includes daily political broadcasting for LBC and Global. I have been looking for partners who won’t be leaning on my shoulder as I write — and it seems I have found them.

Guess where Andrew Marr's off to?

 

Silly leftists on Twitter who have stormed at former Independent editor Andrew Marr every week in recent years for being 'a BBC Tory' will probably keep quiet about him now that he's becoming the New Statesman's chief political commentator - a move that may surprise them but surely won't surprise anyone sensible. 

As it's editor Jason Cowley puts it, the NS is 'a publication "of the left, for the left", so Andrew Marr is evidently returning home.

Update: He tweeteth:

I see in reply that someone had the same thought as me:

Samuel Lloyd: The Left, for years: “Marr is a Tory Party stooge!” Marr, upon leaving the BBC: joins the well known Tory publication… ummm… The New Statesman…

Yet more proof that the 'claims from both sides' argument that some at the BBC still use to defend themselves remains a fallacious argument. 

''Amol The Righteous''

I think it's safe to say that the Daily Mail's Amanda Platell isn't pleased with the BBC. Her Saturday column this week is headlined How the BBC's golden boy Amol Rajan conned me into royal hatchet job.

As well as calling the first part of his documentary The Princes and the Press “a hatchet job on the Palace and the Press...and a hagiography of Harry and Meghan”, she says she “submitted” herself to “at least two hours of filmed conversation with Rajan” but found it “reduced to less than two minutes of selective quotes”. She says she “felt utterly conned”, and feels even more sorry for the Royal Family.

 

It has to be said that The New Statesman's Rachel Cooke isn't overly sympathetic towards Amanda's plight, writing:

These [royal] correspondents have all walked straight into Rajan’s trap. He was the editor of the Independent, they must have thought, he’ll understand, he’ll listen, he’ll take me seriously.

She suspects him of “laughing at them inwardly” [e.g. “at Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail trying to sound cute rather than just plain bitchy”].

But she continues, pondering...:

...how on Earth to explain Rajan’s own, no less comical mode? 

He seems to doubt anyone watching could have even the vaguest grasp not only of the basics of journalism, but of the English language itself. “She is a COLUMNIST,” he says, of Platell. “Which means she provides OPINION.” Hammy pauses, disappointed sighs, patronising explanations: he is very good on Today on BBC Radio 4, but here he sounds ridiculous, half-Hercule Poirot and half-Richard Madeley.

Former BBC presenter Libby Purves enjoyed Rachel's piece, tweeting:

Hilarious. And has Amol The Righteous bang to rights as well!!!

Well, He Would, Wouldn’t He?

I see The New Statesman is recommending a new article with the headline The BBC needs to stand up for itself. Of all the UK’s news outlets, it is still best placed to tell the story straight. 

The NS tweets:

Director-general Tim Davie should be challenging the charge that the corporation has moved away from impartial reporting, not accepting it, writes Philip J Collins.

You'll have seen this Phil Collins on BBC politics shows many, many times. He's long been a favourite pundit of the corporation's.

Quite why this arch-Blairite who helped write Sir Keir Starmer's 2021 Labour Party Conference speech and is married to BBC news presenter Geeta Guru-Murthy is so intensely relaxed about BBC impartiality and believes the BBC ''does the best it can, in difficult circumstances, to tell the story straight'' is surely anyone's guess. 😜

"So embarrassing"

 

Did you see Jon Sopel's first question to Joe Biden's new press secretary Jen Psaki? 

Did it make you cringe?

Neither of them took it very seriously, as you can tell from his laughing eyes...

...and her [p]sarky reply:

Jon Sopel: What happened to the Churchill bust and what should be read about its removal from the Oval Office?
Jen Psaki: Oooh, such an important question! It's the plane of today. 

Stephen Bush, the political editor of The New Statesman, wasn't impressed. And nor was another New Statesman author:

Stephen Bush, New Statesman: I know I'm a joyless bore, but isn't, say, that Blinken has said a genocide has taken place in Xinjang and there's another vote on this exact topic coming in Parliament a more important question for our public service broadcaster? Isn't the point of the levy we literally take the country's poorest *to court* to enforce that it frees them up to be joyless bores? 

Ian Leslie, New Statesman: This is pathetic. It makes Jon Sopel look silly but more importantly, as Stephen Bush suggests, it's exactly what the BBC shouldn't be doing. The BBC should always be trying to be more serious than its competitors. That's the licence that the licence fee gives it. And when you aim over the heads of the audience, more often than not you meet them head on. People are not stupid. 

Darren Sugg: "Such an important question". The Press Sec beginning the answer by taking the p*ss is not a good sign. 

Ian Leslie: So embarrassing.

*******

UPDATE: A rather different way of putting it, but a similar sentiment:

The Leave Alliance: See, this is why the BBC is shit. Here you have a "journalist" with privileged access to the *White House*, who could have asked any question under the sun be it pertaining to trade, security, Covid (take your pick) and this is what the useless BBC obsesses about. Total wastrels.

I mean, you can argue the toss whether it's got a left wing bias but if you wanted definitive proof that it's a useless heap shit that adds no value to public discourse, then this is it. But this is essentially a manifestation of that metropolitan bias.

And the worst part about this? You could raise this issue with BBC news producers and they wouldn't even see what the problem was. They think this guy is elite journalism - and the worse they get, the better they think they are.

This is the same media that gives us all the other sub-mediocre deadbeats who routinely waste airspace on trivia, not having the first idea how to interrogate an issue - and then they tell us we should be glad to pay for it.

The New Statesman tweets. Lewis likes.

You who aren't on Twitter probably have the right idea but, in the medium's defence, it at least allows you to gawp at lots of absolutely fascinating behaviour.

(Shades of early 18th Century London and Bedlam?)

For instance, earlier today I spotted young Lewis Goodall, soon to Newsnight's policy editor, giving the following tweet from the New Statesman's Stephen Bush a 'like':

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.

I can't find Lewis's 'like' now, but it was definitely there, so either I've mislaid it or he's taken flight and 'unliked' it - like that overly-partisan tweet he deleted the other night. 

If I were a serious BBC defender I'd definitely 'unlike' Stephen's post too, because it's provides lots of large fish, an overly small barrel and a fully-loaded shotgun. 

As you already know:

The other guest editors were (1) race-focused George the Poet, (2) eco-activist Greta Thunberg, (3) every Brexit haters' heroine Lady Hale and (4) cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry. 

Plus, poor Charles got the two-hour Saturday show - unlike George, Greta and Lady (the three most 'woke' guest editors), who got three-hour editions. 

And Charles  - and some of his chosen guests - got by far the hardest time from the Today presenters (especially ultra-loyal-to-the-BBC Nick Robinson).

In many ways this can be added to the ever-growing heap of examples of 'complaints from both sides that are utter bilge.

Another one bites the dust

Sir Roger Scruton

Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument; your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience.                                                                                Sir Roger Scruton

There are certain things that no sensible person can deny, don't you think?

(As ever, please feel free to deny them if you want.)

Such as:

(a) that 'Islamophobia' is a term originally foisted upon us by Islamic supremacists intent on rendering Islam beyond criticism, subsequently taken up by (their) useful idiots,

(b) that multi-billionaire George Soros pours masses of money into country after country after country, including his native Hungary, in order to influence their political direction in the way he favours,

and

(c) that the authoritarian Chinese communist regime has reverted to trying to turn out an obedient population in the usual Orwellian manner of such regimes.

And yet saying those reasonable things has resulted in our finest philosopher Sir Roger Scruton being sacked by the hapless, gutless weather vanes in  our present Government.

Why? Because they caved in to yet another hue-and-cry from the usual fools, frauds and firebrands, this time following a New Statesman interview.

I really would like to see the full interview too, rather than just read the NS edited quotes in a heavily-authored NS article. Forgive me if I don't trust them. I specifically want to see the full context of Sir Roger's remarks about the Chinese tyranny and its effects on the Chinese people. I'm particularly suspicious of the dots in the quote cited in the NS. (“They’re creating robots out of their own people… each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.”)

Back to the BBC.

This is how the BBC News website presented the story.

(Note how the even-more-edited-than-in-the-New-Statesman quote in the third paragraph makes Sir Roger sound like he's being racist):

Conservative academic Sir Roger Scruton has been sacked as head of a government housing body following critical comments about Islam and China. 

The philosopher's appointment to head the Building Beautiful Commission in November was criticised at the time. 

He has now been dismissed after claiming Islamophobia was "a propaganda word" and "each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one". 

The Ministry of Housing said the remarks were "unacceptable".

Sir Roger left his position "with immediate effect" after an interview with the New Statesman in which he restated past comments about Islamophobia, and Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros.

He said that "anybody who doesn't think that there's a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts" while he said China was "creating robots out of their own people" which he said was a "frightening thing". 

He said he stood by comments he has made in the past that Islamophobia was a "propaganda word invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue". 

The Conservatives have been accused of failing to act over Islamophobia in the party. 

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire defended Sir Roger at the time of his appointment amid claims his views made him unsuitable for the job, saying many of the attacks on him were "misinformed and ill-judged". 

A government spokesman said on Wednesday: "Sir Roger Scruton has been dismissed as Chairman of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission with immediate effect, following his unacceptable comments." 

And Radio 4's Six O'Clock News gave us this take on the story:

A government adviser has been sacked for making comments about Islamophobia which Labour said invoked the language of white supremacists. A government spokeswoman said Sir Roger Scruton, who had an unpaid role as a housing adviser, had made unacceptable remarks to a political magazine. The New Statesman says the philosopher repeated comments he first made last year in which he described Islamophobia as a propaganda word invented by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Labour person who used the 'white supremacist' charge against Professor Scruton, if you were wondering, was Dawn Butler.

You may remember her as being the one who accused Jamie Oliver of "cultural appropriation" over a jerk rice product, and who called Theresa May "racist" over the Windrush affair, and who's called Donald Trump "racist" and Sir Alan Sugar "racist" and yet who appointed an advisor who said that "all whites" are racist.

I think I'll stick with Sir Roger rather than Dawn. I suspect he's vastly less racist at heart than she is.


Update: Aha, the New Statesman journalist responsible was challenged over those dots in the quote “They’re creating robots out of their own people… each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing”.

The ellipses stood for "by constraining what can be done".

Apparently there wasn't "space" for those six words in the New Statesman!:

Lots of people weren't happy with George Eaton's behaviour (even more after he then deleted the above tweet):

Freddie Sayers: So the full Scruton quote is about tyrannical Chinese government overreach - that is the sense in which Chinese people are being made into replicas of one another. The only thing "outrageous" about this quote is the way it was edited.
Kristian Niemietz: The edit totally changes the meaning. In the edited version, it sounds as if Scruton were using racial stereotypes. In the full version, it's clear that he does nothing of the sort. He's critiquing conformity-enforcing government policies.
Claire Fox: Regardless of what one thinks of Scruton, twisting of his quote that attacks Chinese authoritarianism (& how it treats its citizens) presented as attack on Chinese people, is a worrying sign of 'hit' journalism.  Who'll ever give an interview if their words edited this way?
Adrian Hilton:  This is unethical journalism. You can't interview someone and then edit their comments so that readers will infer racism, when clearly Roger Scruton was referring to the generational replication of communist ideology. Has George Eaton deleted his tweet because of disk space?
Maajid Nawaz: Hi, George Eaton, agree or not with Scruton, it is simply *dishonest* to edit his quote. What’s happening here is not a neat picture of “my side good, your side bad”, but rather bad actors deliberately misrepresenting people who have said some (other) bad things. This, just to achieve a “gotcha” moment for selfish reasons, which ultimately undermines honest debate. You’re a left-wing anti-racist journalist. I’m a survivor of a recent violent racist attack, leaving me scarred for life. Can you justify to me why you lied about Roger Scruton’s quote about the Chinese, making it harder for racism victims like me to be believed?
Michael Brendan Dougherty: For reasons of space, George Eaton had to excise the precise five words that entirely change the meaning of his subject's quote. Imagine forfeiting your self-respect as a journalist and the respect of every half-literate reader for the backslapping of Owen Jones.
Ryan Bourne: Leaving aside other quotes, libertarians and conservatives should refuse to give comment to George Eaton after seeing the way he disgracefully partially quoted Scruton to change the meaning of China remark. Eaton has proved himself a partisan hit man.
Simon Evans: I've just looked up his comments on Chinese people. They are actually an attack on the Chinese regime and in fact supportive of Chinese people. Completely the opposite of what George Eaton is dishonestly reporting. How is he allowed to get away with this? 

Why LBC is unsettling the BBC

Former head of BBC Television News Roger Mosey is becoming required reading at The New Statesman. His latest piece explains why the "startling growth" of LBC, along with "the punchiness of its editorial proposition", is "unsettling" the BBC. He adds that "many of the most memorable moments of political radio in recent years have not happened in their customary home of the Radio 4 news programmes" but on LBC. Here's an extract:

The BBC is uneasy about what is happening at LBC. “Surprised” is one of the milder adjectives used by an executive when asked to assess how LBC can broadcast a regular show by an elected politician like [Nigel] Farage within the Ofcom impartiality framework. If you happened to tune in only at a particular time each day, you would hardly be getting a balanced picture – and LBC has exploited to its full the idea of “due impartiality”, which allows broadcasters to aim for impartiality across the totality of their output rather than within a single edition of a programme.

Among the ranks of BBC producers, there are those who find this idea more attractive than the robotic balance of “this person says yes, this person says no” that can be the corporation’s default. That’s particularly the case on 5 Live, where the figures are heading downwards. Twenty years ago, 5 Live was a reinvention of speech radio; but its audience is being nibbled away by dedicated sport and news stations – and some of its editorial rationale is lost in an age of social media. Staff there express admiration for LBC’s interaction with its audience and the strength of its personality and they muse about whether they might be able to follow suit by having, for instance, consecutive shows that represent different points of view. 

It’s one possible response to the challenge I noted here last month about some BBC presenters displaying their political colours on social media – so why not on air too?

Perhaps the appeal of LBC over Radio 4 is ever easier to explain though. As Harriet Sergeant commented in response to Roger Mosey's piece, "Political correctness makes for boring radio. That's why we’re shifting the dial from BBC Radio 4 to LBC"

On which point, Rod Liddle at The Spectator has another fine piece headlined There are too many women on Radio 4 and they’re always moaning. In it he lists the type of people the social engineers at the BBC, especially BBC Radio 4, don't create quotas for to ensure proper representation:

• People who want the UK to leave the European Union — 52 per cent (Source: that referendum we had in 2016).
• People who think Islam is not compatible with the British way of life — 56 per cent (ComRes poll, 2016).
• People who disagree with the ‘right’ of gay people to adopt children — 52 per cent (British Social Attitudes Survey 2013).
• People who think immigration levels to this country are too high — 63 per cent (YouGov poll, 2018).
• People who think immigration in general has had a negative impact in the UK — 71 per cent (Sky poll for the think tank Demos, 2018).
• Europeans who want to stop all immigration from Muslim majority countries — 55 per cent (Chatham House, 2017).
• People who believe Britain is a Christian country — 55 per cent (YouGov poll, 2014).
• People who think, rightly, that there are just two genders, male and female — 56 per cent (Fawcett Society, 2016).
• People who do not identify as ‘feminist’ — 93 per cent (Fawcett Society, 2016).

Rod continues:

Now, tell me if you think those views are proportionately represented on the BBC, and especially Radio 4? Do you think they are given equal airtime to the less popular liberal standpoints which nonetheless the BBC supports? If so, you have been listening to a very different Auntie to me over the past ten years. In almost every case quoted above, people who express those sorts of views are considered by the BBC to be antediluvian and quite beyond the pale, and the usual discussion to be had is: what can we do to make these morons change their minds? Those views quoted above are simply wrong, so far as the BBC is concerned, and there’s an end to it, even when those views are in a clear majority.

Pure opinion

Meanwhile, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East Editor, has been sounding off away from the BBC at his usual non-BBC haunt, The New Statesman. 

(Come to think of it, how has that 'progressive' magazine managed to avoid a name change? 'Statesman' in 2018? #MeToo). 

The Impartial One does his usual thing. He begins by making the Palestinians of Gaza sound like victims and the Israelis look like their oppressors. He then praises those critical of Israel. 

Next he complains that his pet subject (Israel and the Palestinians) has been neglected in recent year before painting a picture of the border protests which reinforces his initial binary portrait (oppressed Palestinians, oppressing Israelis). 

His own vaguely unnerving trip through Israeli security follows. 

Then, in contrast to the sufferings of the Palestinians (according to JB), comes the contrast: the Ivanka-led US embassy in Jerusalem launch. ("Many were middle-aged, in good shape, and expensively dressed. They looked rich and my guess was that they were generous donors, to Israel, or President Trump, or both.") The talk there of peace was, Jeremy opines, "misleading". 

Hamas is given the alternative description of "the Islamic Resistance Movement", though - oddly - not described as being considered a terrorist organisation by many (the EU, the UK, the US, etc). 

Yes, Hamas organised the demonstrations, he concedes, before going large with the buts. "But is wrong to claim that Hamas ordered thousands to risk their lives at the fence. They had plenty of reasons of their own to protest" - unemployment for instance. 

There won't be peace until Israel and the Palestinians agree to share the land, and "history shows" that Israel's "military occupation" won't work in the long term, he says. 

The present leaders - Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu - aren't the right people: MA is too old and unable to galvanise his side; BN is "good at using the language of peace but his actions belie his words", according to Jeremy. And the piece ends by continuing Jeremy Bowen's point about the abysmalness of President Abbas and PM Netanyahu by gloomily saying:

The next generation of leaders might be no better. If so, they will condemn their children to more hatred, insecurity and death. 

It may be at The New Statesman but it's nothing new for Jeremy Bowen. His BBC reporting from Israel/Gaza a couple of weeks back was entirely in tandem with this piece. 

Right, wrong or otherwise, it's pure opinion, isn't it?

(You may have to gird your loins and read the piece via the link to make sure). 

Why the BBC "secretly enjoys" Owen Jones's attacks on Andrew Neil

Roger Mosey, in BBC days gone by

Former head of BBC Television News Roger Mosey has written a piece for The New Statesman headlined Why Owen Jones’s attack on Andrew Neil secretly delighted the BBC. 

It's full of interesting points, and I suspect that you'll enjoy it.

It's his take on why BBC reporters' Twitter comments matter and how they seriously compromise 'BBC impartiality'...

...however much some people might discount such things as trivia not worth bothering about by blogs about BBC bias. After all, for many BBC reporters, it's now a key part of their reporting role and it's fully BBC-branded.

Roger singles out Laura Bicker for emoting in a dumbed-down way ("totes emosh") over the Kim-Moon "bromance", and regular anti-Trump sneerer Anthony Zurcher....

Zurcher often retweets Trump with caustic comments

(Very true!)

...and business correspondent Joe Lynam for being pro-EU ("on Twitter it’s clear he cares a lot about the EU"). 

All are absolutely fair comments from Mr Mosey - though I believe him to be seriously mistaken in thinking that their TV, radio and online reporting is "straight", impartiality-wise. It is no such thing. [Evidence from this blog of all three reporters behaving less than impartially? Well, please click here for Laura, here for Anthony and here for Joe].  

He then goes on, just as fairly, to criticise John Simpson for (despite himself) "revealing this thinking" on Brexit on Twitter.

And then he brings in Andrew Neil, long the BBC presenter those who deny that the BBC has a left-liberal bias like to cite. 

As I've said before, I agree that Andrew Neil - the fairest of all BBC interviewers - behaves as badly as these others on Twitter. He too thinks he can behave "without impunity" on social media. Unlike all of the above, however, his Twitter feed comes from 'the other side'.

And that's where Owen Jones leaps in, accusing Andrew Neil (quite correctly) of behaving in a less-than-impartial way on Twitter and, thus, "promoting right-wing causes" - hence 'proving' the BBC to be biased in 'the other direction'.

Roger Mosey says the BBC "secretly enjoys assaults like that" from Owen Jones, as it "undermines the usual claim that it is controlled by liberal lefties"

He concludes by posing a dilemma for the BBC:

All this points to a choice that broadcasters still have: to engage or not. One presenter who shuns social media told me: “I’m genuinely not persuaded that tweeting serves any useful purpose for broadcasters who must be seen as impartial. Maybe it raises the tweeter’s profile – but with whom? The people who matter are the audience and I suspect they reach their judgement on how we perform when we’re doing our jobs.” Some European public service broadcasters take the hard line of simply not allowing their presenters to vent on social media, and they don’t seem the poorer for it.

Please read it all (if you have time).

Another opinion piece from Mr Marr

Andrew Marr has certainly kicked up quite a festive flurry of controversy with his New Statesman article An optimist's guide to Brexit. He's essentially called for Remoaners to stop remoaning and seize the invigorating, exciting opportunities that Brexit could bring.

His piece begins:

You hear it in the dingy corners of a crumbling Westminster Palace, at discreetly expensive restaurants and in noxious, Christmas-festooned pubs. You hear it from former prime ministers and lowly special advisers, and even from foreign leaders.

“Brexit will not happen.” It cannot actually happen. Parliament, we are told, will force the deluded people to come to their senses, aided by the judiciary and big business. If the people have made a mistake, then can they not be shown the latest economic forecasts and be obliged, somehow, to think again?

With respect to all involved, and – briefly – to adopt the demotic of Boris Johnson, this must be cobblers. If parliament asked the people of the UK to vote on a subject of such huge importance; and if, after exhaustive and exhausting debate, they made their decision, by a clear majority; and if they were then told that it wasn’t going to happen, or at least not without a second vote, the glossy fabric of British democracy would be ripped to shreds. Frankly, I dread to think what would follow.

It is time to think differently. Brexit is coming, and relatively soon. We have to assume that the UK will be outside the EU within two and a bit years. An entirely new chapter in our politics will then begin. Yet most of the British political class is so battered and demoralised by the Brexit decision that they cannot take what is likely at face value, and start to chart how they intend to reshape a country that has much more power over its own governance. 

Those Remoaners, naturally, are having none of it - well, at least the ones on Twitter who have replied to Andrew Marr. He's felt compelled to respond (and they still aren't having any of it):

So the Remoaners on Twitter are telling Mr Marr where to go but will his message hit home at the BBC? Will it, for example, ever percolate its way into the brains of the people behind, say, Newsnight, who still seem to be going through the Five Stages of Grief about Brexit (just like the Twitter crowd), six months on?  

2017 will tell. 

John Simpson sounds off

This week's New Statesman is a post-referendum 'special edition'. 

Among its contributors are three senior BBC journalists/presenters - Andrew Marr, Nicky Campbell and John Simpson. 

Andrew Marr's piece - "How a monumental establishment cock-up led to our biggest act of democracy" - is an expansion of his 'editorial' on last week's Marr programme. He even quotes Chesterton's poem containing the famous lines, "For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet." The 'new' thing here is his latest prediction for where we're heading politically:

My guess is that parliamentary chaos and an overwhelming sense of drift at the centre of politics will propel us into an election later this year or early next year. If so, that will mean that, tactically, the Brexiteers, who don’t want to trigger Article 50 just yet, must do so before the people are asked for their view again. [He seems to be presuming that the people are likely to give a different answer]. 

And, of course, if it turns out that George Osborne’s blood-curdling warnings about jobs and investment turn out to be even half accurate, then those same cheerful gentlemen will have many personal apologies to make to people who do lose their jobs, or see prices rise and their pensions fall. There is plenty of anger still to come.

Nicky Campbell's piece shamelessly sings the BBC's own praises. He claims that everyone at Radio 5 Live wasn't remotely surprised by the result of the referendum. Why? Because of what's been happening during phone-ins. Up until 23 June, the fervour was coming from the Leave side. After 23 June the other side became fervent too. The Radio 5 debates have been great. "We pride ourselves on reaching far beyond the confines of metropolitan England," he says. (Self-praise is no praise, Nicky). 

Both Andrew Marr and Nicky Campbell are careful not to sound like the kind of BBC types that 'people like us' are meant to imagine. John Simpson - that great, veteran 'voice of the BBC' - doesn't give such concerns even a moment's consideration and it's not hard to guess how he voted in the EU referendum.

I think I need to quote at some length here (though it's only a fairly small part of a long piece): 

Forty-one years later, the sheer nastiness and mendacity of the 2016 campaign was, by contrast, stunning. So was the careless way many people wandered into the voting booths to vote on the entire future of their country. “Oh yes, I voted Leave,” a specialist at a big NHS hospital told me. “Well, I couldn’t make my mind up, it was all so complicated, so I plumped for No because I thought it’d make life more interesting.”

An opinion poll carried out immediately after the result was announced indicated that seven out of ten Leave voters hadn’t thought the referendum mattered very much. In comparison to 1975, we seemed to sleepwalk our way to a decision that could have the utmost consequences for the lives and prosperity of our children and our children’s children. “I hate the f***ing old people of this country for what they’ve done,” an engineering student at a notably gloomy street party in Oxford said to me afterwards. Another explained in some detail how the funding of six graduate students he knew would be cut off almost immediately. All of them, he said, would now apply to US universities for jobs there.

We didn’t appear unduly shaken by the murder of a young and immensely promising MP by someone apparently stirred up by the issue. “Britain first” or “Put Britain first”, he is alleged to have shouted as he shot and stabbed Jo Cox to death. To him, it seems, she was a traitor for wanting to remain in Europe.

In the two centuries since 1812, only eight MPs have been murdered – six of them by Irish republican fanatics, one by a lunatic. Jo Cox seems to have been the first MP to be killed for personal, reasoned views. Did this change the campaign? A week later, she seemed almost to have been forgotten. When the news of his victory came through, Nigel Farage had put the memory of her murder aside to such an extent that he could say the referendum result was a revolution achieved “without a shot being fired”. He apologised later, but perhaps it showed how far from the forefront of his mind the atrocity had been.

We know where such views 'come from', politically-speaking, don't we? They come from a standpoint similar to that of Mr. Simpson's near lookalike, Lord Chris Patten. They also come from a standpoint that many if not most of Andrew Marr, Nicky Campbell and John Simpson's BBC colleagues are likely to share. 

John Simpson surely is 'the voice of the BBC'.

Things I've read (and can remember)

Having (it appears) become merely a weekend blogger, Friday night now seems to mean catching up with all sorts of things - and trying to remember all the other things about the BBC which have flitted across my mind in the past five days. 

(I wish the world would slow down. There's been far too much going on and my brain isn't what it used to be.)

Among the things I've read this week have been the following:


1. THE CONSERVATIVE WOMAN: Biased BBC will load the dice against Brexit and Cameron’s claim he has banished “ever closer union” is a legal fiction - both by former BBC producer David Keighley.

The first piece looks at the BBC Trust's slippery behaviour - first, in slipping out the BBC's editorial guidelines on the corporation's EU referendum coverage and, second, regarding the Trust's offhand rejection of MPs' concerns about monitoring BBC bias.

The second piece includes a striking example of pro-EU bias from the BBC News website, awarding "a win" to David Cameron for 'exempting us from ever-closer union'. Whether the PM has actually done so (legally-speaking) is disputed, so the BBC awarding him "a win" might be premature (and biased).


2. THE NEW STATESMAN: The BBC has never been a natural home for Eurosceptics – just ask the young Michael Gove - a piece by former BBC head of television news/former Today editor Roger Mosey.

Mr Mosey, as might be expected, puts a generally pro-BBC case, but admits:

(1) that he "came across vanishingly few EU withdrawalists in [his]broadcasting life". 

(2) that BBC colleagues would 'hear' "the flapping of white coats" when "Tory Euro-bashers" and UKIP's Lord Pearson denounced the EU and BBC pro-EU bias. 

(3) that he thinks the BBC is too London-centric and, thus, thinks too much like pro-EU London than the rest of the country. 

(4) that like the rest of the Westminster Bubble, the BBC tends to concentrate more on "process" than "policy" (hence, presumably, all the 'splits' stuff).

(5) that BBC staff are "much more In than Out".

3. THE SPECTATOR: Who will watch for BBC bias in the EU referendum campaign?  - by Charles Moore...

...in which Mr Moore hopes that pro-Leave campaigners will be monitoring the BBC for bias (I think his wish will come true!) and where he recalls a couple of hours of biased (pro-EU) BBC broadcasting on Today (a classic example of what I've recently been calling a 'snapshot').

An incidental moment in Charles Moore's piece recalls another Speccie piece by Rod Liddle (prior to Nick Robinson's arrival). Rod strongly suspected that John Humphrys was the rumoured "Tory" on the Today team. Charles suspects that John Humphrys might be the one non-Remain member of the Today team.

(That might explain the otherwise baffling series of features slagging him off over the past year or so on Roger Bolton's Feedback - a series of attacks that has always felt oddly personal to my ears.

Well, if the BBC can fill its airwaves with endless speculation, so can I!)


4. THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: Israel must stop making it easy for the boycotters - by John Ware.

The headline doesn't tell the full story here. The veteran BBC Panorama reporter lands a few solid punches on the strange and frequently antisemitic BDS brigade.


5. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The media is twisting the knife into Israel over the 'lone wolf intifada' - by Eylon Aslan-Levy.

Those notorious BBC headlines make their appearance here, and Eylon makes a strong case against the media in general. 

Medhi and the Ed Stone

As it's Friday night, we're going to hand over the blog to Ed Miliband (remember him?) for a while...

Thanks Craig, that's a great question. Good to be with you here at ITBB. (And, no, it isn't biased). And, look, thank you for all of your support following my party's humiliating defeat this past May.

Look, I want to come to the detail of that in a minute, but I want to make a broader point which is a very, very important point for the future of the country. I believe passionately that politicians should sound human...

Sorry to interrupt there, Ed, but here's something you might want to read - and that's far too irresistible not to post..

Here's Mehdi Hasan in 2010, just before you became leader, showing the political perspicacity for which the kuffar-bashing freelancer is so well known:

I remember the first time I realised Ed Miliband could be the next Labour leader. Standing in a packed room at the TUC's Congress House headquarters in January, at Ken Livingstone's Progressive London conference, I watched as the younger Miliband brother, clad in a fleece and jeans, inspired a captive audience of party members, Trots, anarchists, Greens and, yes, Liberal Democrats. Speaking without notes, the then climate change secretary passionately made the case for tackling global warming, despite the depressing deadlock at Copenhagen a month earlier. "He's awesome, isn't he?" whispered the young woman next to me, her eyes alight with excitement.

Of all the Oxbridge candidates running for Labour leader, it is Ed Miliband who displays the common touch - or, in the words of Neil Kinnock, the "X-factor". "He has a special ability to lift spirits and motivate people - the capacity to inspire," says the former Labour leader. The younger Miliband's strategists and supporters have known from the start that this is their man's strongest selling point: his ability to reach out, in our new, plural era of coalition politics. Throughout this protracted contest, throngs of energised Ed Miliband supporters have descended on the various hustings holding placards proclaiming "Ed Speaks Human".

Let us be clear: Ed M is not JFK. Nor is he the British equivalent of Barack Obama. But he does have the all-important ability to connect with ordinary people, especially the young, and to motivate and inspire them.

So, Ed, what do you make of that?

Thanks Sue, that's a great question.

Look, while I was walking on Clapham Common one night, I met a man called Gareth. He said to me, "Look, I want a politician who speaks human". I said, "Look, I am that politician". Gareth voted UKIP. We need to listen to Gareth...

Sorry, Mr Miliband, I'm going to have to interrupt you there. We've run out of time, I'm afraid. Back to Laura in the studio...

Thanks Craig. Now the Labour leadership contest may not be thrilling the nation but Twitter and the Newsnight audience are clearly swinging Jeremy's way. (Corbyn's, not Paxman's of course). Here's our political editor, Allegra Stratton...

Laura, I've learned tonight that Andy Burnham has received the backing of the Unite and Thunderbirds unions. According to Twitter, Liz Kendall is a Tory and the only hope for the nation is to vote for me...er, for Yvette Cooper. 

Thanks Allegra. Now here's the former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, and restaurateur and friend of Yvette Cooper, René Artois  Thank you for coming onto Newsnight. Now, M. Artois, who do you think would make the best leader for Labour?

Merci, Laura, you stupid woman. Ah, Yvette!...

And to you, Ed Balls?

Ah, Michelle of the Resistance!...er...Ah, Yvette!

The seven deadly sins of tweeting about politics

As you probably don't read The New Statesman very often (he says, doubtless making wild assumptions about you), I thought I'd share this with you. It's best read at the Staggers itself so that you can see the examples in all their sinfulness. 

It follows another Twitter #bbcbias onslaught from Labour Party activists...

The seven deadly sins of tweeting about politics 

As #CameronMustGo hashtaggers are tweeting their fury about the fact that mainstream news outlets haven't picked up their online campaign, it's time to look at the worst sins committed by those who take their political insights to Twitter.

Accusing the BBC of bias for not reporting things that... aren't stories
Although this particular sin has been heightened today by #CameronMustGo tweeters attacking the BBC for refusing to pick up on their hashtag campaign, it is a time-old, enduring trope of angry political tweets. If the Beeb doesn't mention Some People Being Angry at the Prime Minister, whether it's stated in a hashtag or via a handful of people protesting somewhere, it is accused of rightwing bias. If it does anything else, it's accused of leftwing bias.

Failing to understand the point of the House of Commons chamber
This is a particularly popular genre of political tweetery: taking a screenshot of MPs debating in the Commons, and commenting on how heartless and detached they are because not all 650 of our representatives are present for whichever debate the tweeter has seized upon. Even if it's a late afternoon adjournment debate about the capacity of the West Anglia Rail Line.

Saying "this keeps being removed" when it really doesn't
A nefarious internet conspiracy is inevitably pointed out whenever someone makes a meme of a politician of the ruling party being ripped apart, usually by a civilian wide-eyed with sincerity, on television. For some reason, many users decide that Twitter's staff can be bothered to rake through its billions of tweets to delete a minor skirmish from the Daily Politics on a Tuesday in order to protect the reputation of a little-known UK government minister. And they beg you for a retweet.

Tweeting a picture of a politician you admire/Owen Jones beside a big block of text
A particularly offensive Twitter sin, mainly due to the fact that the font is always terrible on these things. Someone somewhere sits and transcribes a favourite quote from a respected heavyweight politician, or a junior shadow minister, or Owen Jones, highlights it all and hits Tempus Sans, and then watches their treasured work take flight among fellow Twitter sinners.

PMQs verdict/review/in short – and then just listing your party's attack lines
If watching Prime Minister's Questions with Twitter by your side, it is common practice to give your snap "verdict" on the exchange. This means politicians and supporters of both Cameron and Miliband's parties give us the same review each week: summing up their party's attack lines. Sometimes "privatising the NHS" is exchanged for "tax-cuts for millionaires", but each week is pretty constant.

Nazi/Communist references
This is the GCSE school of politics tweets: linking rightwing parties with Hitler, and leftwing parties with Marx.

Orwell references
Well, really it's just the one reference: They "looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again... ". A favourite accompanying picture for this one is the Prime Minister with a pig for a face, but it can equally be used to say something cynical about the Labour party. 

I'm not sure this kind of thing just applies to Twitter.