Did the BBC prevent John Sweeney from profiling Seumas Milne?

"posh, minor aristocrat Stalinist" Seamus 

I didn't know, until Sue informed me yesterday, that the famous John Sweeney now co-hosts a podcast called 'Last Call'. 

He presents it with an American journalist called Michael Weiss, and the pair of them call their double act 'Two Boozy Hacks'. (As far as John Sweeney is concerned, I think we can all guess why!) 

Their latest episode is called 'Labour Pains' and features former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson as a special guest. It last about an hour.

Unexpectedly, I must say that I enjoyed it. They all came across as rather charming.

John was on the pinot grigio, if you're wondering.

(In fairness, I did once write, "Do you know who I'd really like a night-out with? Yes, Panorama/Newsnight star reporter John Sweeney. He sounds great fun. I'd specifically like to be his all-expenses-paid-for guest", and I stand by that.)

The serious bit comes in the last quarter of an hour when they turn to Labour antisemitism. As you'd perhaps expect, having spent 18 years at the BBC, John Sweeney seems to have fully imbibed the general BBC resentment towards the State of Israel, and even has a Jeremy Bowen-like personal grievance against it, but was still distressed at the influx of the antisemites into the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Also interesting was their discussion of Mr Corbyn's director of communications, Seumas Milne. This was John Sweeney's boozy ramble on the subject:

I need to share with our three listeners my class hatred here in that I was brought up...we lived in in Manchester, and then when I was ten we moved down to Hampshire and I went to a grammar school. And Seumas Milne went to Winchester College. And it is comically posh. And its also where...most of the Cambridge spies when to Winchester. And then here's this almost comically absurd Stalinist who went to Winchester College. He is the voice of the Labour Party. And the problem I had when I was a BBC journalist was 'Can I please do a profile of Seumas Milne, in the way that I was allowed when I worked at The Observer, to do profiles for the BBC about Alastair Campbell and his shenanigans with Rupert Murdoch, blah, blah, blah, blah?', and it was impossible to get through. So, although Seumas was a posh, aristocratic Stalinist, people were afraid of him and it was impossible for me at the BBC to do a proper profile of the guy. 

Now that's very interesting, isn't it? The BBC didn't want to let John Sweeney do a proper profile of the avowed Stalinist-communist director of communications for the leader of the Labour Party. Was it just because they were afraid of Seumas Milne (and the Corbynistas)? Or was it also because, for some strange reason, the man's extreme politics didn't particularly worry them?

It's especially rum, isn't it, because the BBC hasn't shown any reluctance to 'properly profile' the Conservatives' director of communications. He was on the end of a full-length, thoroughly one-sided hatchet job earlier this year, fronted by Emily Maitlis. 

(What is it about his public antipathy towards the BBC and his role in winning the EU referendum for Leave and the 2019 general election for Boris Johnson that so excites the BBC's hostility towards Mr Cummings?)

Anyhow, cheers!

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.  

"One cynic told me expectations are so low if Corbyn turns up and doesn't soil himself it's a success"

Now, it's only right after the previous post to note that Mark Mardell has been getting 'complaints from both sides' today. 

His report on TWTW about Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn's main spokesman, might strike some as perfectly balanced, or others as sympathetic to Mr Milne, or others still as hostile to Mr Milne. (Though a range of voices was provided - all from the Left, of course - given that the most regular charges against Seumas Milne that I've read are that he's a Stalinist with a long history of very extreme comments and that none of that side of his past was explored, simply dismissed in passing, I'd say it tilted towards the sympathetic side. Still, there were plenty of supporters of Seumas and plenty of critics - and plenty of supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and plenty of critics.)

None of that was exactly the thing which caused the Corbynistas to cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of war on Mark Mardell today. No, the casus belli was a very brief, passing anecdote: 

One cynic told me expectations are so low if Corbyn turns up and doesn't soil himself it's a success, but activists do feel vindicated pointing to a smooth manifesto launch and a recent rise in the opinion polls. 

Of course, Mark Mardell was just passing on some anonymous comment from a Labour 'cynic', but these Twitter critics are blaming him for making the remarks. 

'Complaints from both sides' indeed. But my post has a lot of compelling evidence, hopefully, while these criticisms seem to be based on a misunderstanding of who said what and what reporting involves.

My 'complaint' is, therefore, better than their 'complaints' and the 'complaints from both sides' defence, yet again, crumbles into the sorry remnants of an apple crumble after all the apple has been eaten and there are only a few crumbs of crumble left.

So there!

The soft bigotry of low expectations

A joint @AJEnglish @guardian #SpyCables team meet w @ewenmacaskill @SeumasMilne @willjordan @JPGREES #coffee #laptop pic.twitter.com/dqaaToBt2S

— Clayton Swisher (@claytonswisher) February 25, 2015

As if it wasn’t dispiriting enough to witness the ease with which Al Jazeera persuaded the British media that there was a dreadful Israeli plot to bring down the UK government, we now learn that it wasn’t just the Qatari channel that orchestrated the whole thing.

 H/T to ‘Lucy Lips’ on Harry’s Place for spotting this group photo on Clayton Swisher’s Twitter feed. (Clayton Swisher was the presenter of Al Jazeera’s much hyped series  “The Lobby”.) 

It would be no understatement to say that Swisher’s Twitter feed, or timeline or whatever it’s called, is a lobby all by itself. The whole thing practically consists of anti-Zionist tittle-tattle. All the usual characters are in there. Jeremy Corbyn features prominently. 

Corbyn is either being pressured by Seumas, (or perhaps he doesn’t need much persuasion) to get an inquiry going. An inquiry into the Israeli plot to undermine our parliament, no less.  Bit ironic that poor Jeremy has to fend off accusations of antisemitism in his party by instigating a sham inquiry at almost the same time as attempting to initiate another inquiry in the opposite direction. Hopefully it will fizzle out, or perhaps Shami will see to it.

What’s surprising really is the gullibility of the entire British media. How could they not tell that the revelations in the documentary were nothing more than a damp squib? All it amounted to was - wait for it -  ‘the existence of a pro-Israel lobby’ . 

Much worse, apart from missing the fact  that this hyped-up firestorm was nothing but a spark, they failed to grasp that the whole thing was orchestrated by a much more sinister and pernicious lobby, the anti-Zionist lobby if you like.  This is the lobby we should be far more concerned about because it  has direct connections to the UK parliament through the Labour Party, and in particular its director of strategy and communications and as you'll see, Jeremy Corbyn features in Swisher’s tweets and reTweets. Bigly.

The Guardian’s Ewan MacAskill, that’s another beauty. See him on YouTube with The Donald, who realised at once that he is “A very nasty man.”  

So, when we assumed “The Lobby” was just another example of the same old same old tiresome propaganda from the usual Islamists and Jew-bashers, we were expressing  ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.’ 

Yep. We take it as a given that they will lie, invent and manipulate. A bit racist, maybe, but there you are. Now, we must sit up and take notice. It’s in the Labour Party, it’s in our education system, it’s in the media. Watch out. 

Seumas, I'm not sure this is a great idea

I didn’t get anything done today. I couldn’t stop watching events - with increasing incredulity.

Here’s Rod Liddle. His piece is so short that I can reproduce it here in full for your edification. 

A quick update on the BBC TV News. At ten o clock last night the programme ran a report from its idiotic northern correspondent, Ed Thomas, which attempted to suggest that the Leave campaign was responsible for nasty things being said to immigrants. 

Thomas is an appallingly partisan correspondent and presumably has his job because he is only person within the BBC with a vaguely northern accent. He chose to interview two neanderthals. 

Then over to the inestimable Laura Kuenssssberg, who referred to the UK’s ‘likely’ exit from the EU. No, Laura: exit. We have to keep watching these patently parti-pris buggers. The subtle and not so subtle way they attempt to drive the political agenda. Keep an eye out especially for Thomas. And complain whenever he injects his own bien pensant worldview into his stories, which is sorta every time.

Rod has generously given Laura an extra pair of ‘esses’.

I’m hoping Jeremy Corbyn hangs on in there, on the premise that the other lot are even more dangerous. See Melanie Phillips: Dumping Corbyn won’t solve Labour’s crisis. (£) 

Her colourful description of Seaumas Milne, Corbyn’s executive director of strategy, eventually led me to the clip featured on Guido’s blog, the very same clip that the BBC aired later this afternoon."Seumas I'm not sure this is a great idea"

I spent far too long watching the EU on the parliament channel this morning, and weird it was. 

Nigel Farage’s spat with Jean-Claude Juncker  was the highlight of course, but there were some illuminating passages from a few other speakers, which the BBC hasn’t necessarily featured in its reports.

The BBC’s 'talking down' of the money markets prevails, despite today’s rally. 

Throughout the day various economically illiterate Corbynistas have been interviewed. They are unaware that wealth has to come from somewhere. None of the interviewers are in the least curious about why they’re all so enthusiastic about a charisma-free pensioner who would tax the rich ‘till the pips squeak’ and redistribute all wealth into a black hole like a bedraggled Robin Hood. 

Infamous Seumas and 'Newsnight'

I was curious to see how Newsnight would tackle one of the biggest UK party political talking points of the week - the highly controversial appointment of the Guardian's Seumas Milne to be Jeremy Corbyn's chief strategist.

Newsnight's editor Ian Katz was, of course, a long-time colleague of Infamous Seumas at the Guardian, so would it be kid gloves' treatment for the story as a result?

Would the controversy be the focus of a entire Newsnight segment? Or would it be ignored? 

Well neither, it turned out. On Wednesday's edition Labour MP Lisa Nandy was asked a single question about it. She answered (or rather waffled) and then the interview ended with no follow-up question.

For me, that felt like a token gesture to show that the programme had tackled the subject (a spot of watertight oversight).

Judge for yourselves though. This was Kirsty Wark's question:

One of the main developments has been the very critical appointment to the future of the Jeremy Corbyn term, which is the head of strategy, and that is Seumas Milne. Now, people have been looking at his whole back catalogue and he's got some very strong opinions, expressed in a number of articles. I'm just going to put a couple to you. Milosevic shouldn't have been tried at the Hague. That was one of them. The murder of Lee Rigby wasn't terrorism in the normal sense, as an indiscriminate attack on civilians. And as far as he's written about Ukraine, "There certainly has been military expansionism but it's overwhelmingly come from NATO and not from Moscow". Now, he is going to be involved in strategy for the next five years. Do you agree with these statements?

Now, given the wealth of quotes that have been reported already (and they keep on coming) - about 9/11, 7/7, our soldiers in Iraq, Hamas, the victims of Stalin, etc - a few follow-ups might have been expected, Paxman-style, mightn't they? They never came.

Still, in fairness to the increasing crazy world we live in, I have to note that the massed ranks of Corbynistas on Newsnight found even this one question too much: It was a pointless question. Newsnight was 'apeing tabloids again'. There were 'shades of McCarthyism' here. It was 'shameless anti Jeremy Corbyn bias'.