Has the BBC fact-checked John Simpson?

As you'll all know, after winning the presidential election in El Salvador 'populist' Nayib Bukele became the country's new right-leaning president in June 2019, replacing the leftist Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the FMLN.

Enter John Simpson, with a tweet:

El Salvador, under its new president (a former night-club owner), has done what China wants & cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory. As a reward, China has promised huge investment, large-scale tourism, & a new national football stadium.

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) December 4, 2019

Has the BBC's Chris Morris fact-checked that?

It was the leftist Mr Sánchez Cerén who broke off relations with Taiwan in August 2018, not Mr Bukele.

Andrew Neil gives Boris both barrels

If you missed it, here's Andrew Neil's monologue at the end of tonight's The Andrew Neil Interview with Nigel Farage:

That concludes our fourth leaders interview for the general election of 2019. There is, of course, still one to be done - Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. 

We have been asking him for weeks now to give us a date, a time, a venue. As of now, none has been forthcoming. 

No broadcaster can compel a politician to be interviewed, but leaders interviews have been a key part of the BBC's prime time election coverage for decades. We do them, on your behalf, to scrutinise and hold to account those who would govern us. That is democracy. 

We have always proceeded in good faith that the leaders would participate, and in every election they have, all of them, until this one. It is not too late. We have an interview prepared, oven-ready, as Mr Johnson likes to say. 

The theme running through our questions is trust and why at so many times in his career in poltiics and journalism critics and sometimes even those close to him have deemed him to be untrustworthy. It is, of course, relevant to what he is promising us all now. 

Can he be trusted to deliver 50,000 more nurses when almost 20,000 in his numbers are already working for the NHS? He promises 40 new hospitals and only six are scheduled to be built by 2025. Can he believed when he says another 34 will be built in the five years after that? 

Can he be trusted to fund the NHS properly when he uses a cash figure of an extra £34 billion? After inflation the additional money promised amounts to £20 billion. 

He vows that the NHS will not be on the table in any trade talks with America but he vowed to the DUP, his unionist allies in Northern Ireland, that there would never be a border down the Irish Sea - and that is as important to the DUP as the NHS is to the rest of us. It is a vow his Brexit deal would seem to break. 

Now he tells us he has always been an opponent of austerity. We would ask him for evidence of that. And we would want to know why an opponent of austerity would bake so much of it into their future spending plans. We would ask why, as with the proposed increase in police numbers, so many of his promises only take us back to the future, back to where we were before austerity began. 

Social care is an issue of growing concern. On the steps of Downing Street in July he said he had prepared a plan for social care. We would ask him why that plan is not in his manifesto. 

Questions of trust. Questions we would like to put to Boris Johnson so you can hear his replies. But we can't, because he won't sit down with us. 

There is no law, no Supreme Court ruling, that can force Mr Johnson to participate in a BBC leaders interview. But the Prime Minister of our nation will at times have to stand up to President Trump, President Putin, President Xi of China, so it was surely not expecting too much that he spent half an hour standing up to me. 

Good night.

Why?

A leaked dossier on antisemitism in the Labour Party, as submitted to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, is hitting the headline. 

The ITV News website is leading with it tonight, and Sky News has it has their second story, behind the impeachment of Donald Trump. The BBC News website doesn't have the story at all among its headlines. 

Why?

Good old letterboxes

Today Programme  5/12/2019   (2:20:02)

I think Martha Kearney has taken a leaf out of Andrew Marr’s little red book of interupterviewing.

Although the interruption quotient didn’t sound quite so excessive when I 'listened again', I noticed the Today Programme didn’t use the Islamophobia-related excerpt on Twitter. It’s impossible to convey the full ‘interrupterviewing’ tone in a transcript, but here's my best attempt. 

I’ve tried to keep to the appropriate punctuation  (onomatopoeic rather than grammatical) to indicate where the end of a sentence runs straight into the next one so as to prevent an inconveniently ‘premature’ answer, as in the emboldened section below.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

M K

I want you to address what’s going on, ah in your party, in particular the issue of Islamophobia do you acknowledge that this is an a-a-an-important issue for your party the Guardian last week talked about twenty-five sitting and former Conservative councillors being exposed for posting Islamophobic and racist material on Facebook and social media.

SJ

I-I- it’s a very important issue of course I acknowledge that and whenever we have found any kind of prejudice, whether it’s anti-Muslim hatred or any other type of prejudice, I’m proud that we’ve always taken action immediately as soon as that is presented to the party centrally

MK

That’s not the view of Sayeeda Warsi, the former Conservative cabinet minister who thinks that the party has been slow to act on this.

SJ

Look, I’ve got time for Sayeeda Warsi I’ve always listened to what her and others have got to say but she wouldn’t be knowledgeable of all the actions that we have taken, it’s right that when someone is accused that we look at the evidence but we have a zero-tolerance policy against any type of prejudice or hatred it is something - it is something I came into politics to fight, it’s one of the things…

MK

But have you been fighting hard enough within the Conservatives because Sayeeda Warsi talked to The World at One last week and she said she understands your position, she said it would be the career-ending moment for you to criticise the party for Islamophobia, but she hopes that one day you will be braver and bolder.

SJ (chuckles)

Well I have to say, with respect, saying that’s nonsense. This is - why come in to politics if you’re not going to make positive change and this is one of the things that has motivated me more than anything and it’s not just about me it’s something that the Prime Minister would never ever tolerate, and remember, this is the Prime Minister that has appointed the most diverse cabinet that this country, has ever seen and that’s because he…

MK (interrupts)
Would - would you have written an article, as Boris Johnson has, about…

SJ

…loves and celebrates the…

MK (interrupts)
……….would you have written…

SJ ..the whole diversity of this country.

MK 

Would you have written an article as Boris Johnson did about Muslim women wearing the veil looking like letterboxes?

SJ 

I don’t write articles so, but Boris Johnso….

MK

Would you use that language?

SJ

Well he was a journalist and he’s written lots of articles, as he said himself, you know, people can pick one word out or another but what matters is the kind of prime Minister he is going…

MK

So you won’t criticise that..

SJ

and when it comes to our nation and the great diversity of it, it’s hard to find anyone who celebrates it more than Boris Johnson does.

MK

Sajid Javod … sorry, (laugher) Chancellor of the Exchequer, thank you for talking to us.

SJ

Take care.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The BBC (as an institution) clearly equates Islamophobia with antisemitism. The  BBC’s default position is to regard them as two cheeks of the same arse. This might have something to do with rigidly presenting the appearance of ‘impartiality’ that the BBC is so proud of. I think this is foolish and ignorant, but it is what it is, and sadly, one is obliged to accept the situation.  

It seems to me that the BBC sees its role as one of redressing a (non-existent) imbalance. The Chief Rabbi has intervened in the long-running battle for meaningful recognition of the fact that the Labour Party is mired in anti-Jewish racism, therefore the BBC must counterbalance this with “Sayeeda Warsi.”

Remember the famous response to Dan Quayle likening himself to Jack Kennedy? In a similar vein one might say “Sayeeda, you’re no Chief Rabbi”.  Of course, it wasn’t Warsi herself doing the comparison - not on this occasion and not in so many words, but the BBC appears to be doing so on her behalf and making a similarly unfortunate analogy.

The BBC seems to regard Warsi’s demands as the ‘other side of the coin’ in a currency where her non-stop grievance-mongering is given equal billing to the once-in-a-blue-moon intervention by a religious leader whose role is traditionally a-political. 

I just watched Matthew D’Ancona on Politics Live saying he can’t vote for Boris Johnson because “he said veiled Muslim women look like letterboxes and bank robbers.” Deep thinking there, Mr A. Especially when you come on TV looking like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. 

I’d love to know whether there is an acceptable description of the fully-veiled Muslim woman whose sole window of navigation is through a narrow slit of a peephole. What’s wrong with letterboxes, anyway? They’re a delight! Letterboxes still facilitate a human way of keeping in touch with others - that is until they’re as outmoded as fountain pens and paper. 

What will we use as a comparison when letterboxes are obsolete? Then we’ll only be left with bank robbers. No doubt they will still be with us.

What is the answer?

How’s it going?  The election campaign itself?  What about recent potentially game-changing events that are influencing and interfering with it?  These things are almost overwhelming for Craig and I, bogged down with our pesky ‘other’ lives. 

I’ve just had a Labour Party canvasser on the phone. On the bloody phone! She couldn’t be arsed to call round on foot to find out how I intend to vote. She asked the reason why I wouldn’t be voting Labour. I said, “give me a reason why I should”. She answered,  “Foodbanks!” She assumed I'd be dumb enough to vote Labour because ‘foodbanks”.

However, it’s reassuring that several of the comments below articles and analyses I’ve read have covered much of the angles and conclusions that chime with mine. (What I would have blogged earlier if I wasn’t on the phone talking to a Labour activist.)

The most remarkable incident - for want of a better word - that has direct relevance to the BBC was the Andrew Marr interrupterview. 


Even though, to ‘nerdy’ BBC watchers like us  - don’t forget this is our very raison d'etre - it seemed that the only thing Marr’s on-air implosion gave us was a blatant example of bias and the most extreme display of incompetence we’ve seen in a long time.

Whichever side you’re on, I fail to see how anyone could think the outcome was the slightest bit productive, other than as a demonstration of ‘how not to do it”.

Nevertheless, the Boris-bashing, Corbynite public have come down on the side of Andrew Marr.   If you can stomach it, take a peek at Zoe Williams’s piece in the Guardian. "Chuntering and untruths"

The comments underneath indicate that the most robust argument they can muster is that ‘Boris is a liar’. This immovable mindset merely underlines the futility of trying to reason with a Corbynist. 

Elsewhere, people have pointed out that Marr was trying to emulate Andrew Neil. Of course, whether doing so was a conscious decision on his part or was instigated by his production team, it only served to highlight the inferiority of the interviewer and the incompetence of the back-room team. Own goal, in other words. 

There were also numerous ‘below the line’ references to the statistical imbalance between the number of words uttered by interviewer and interviewee (a far superior model is, say, Peter Whittle of New Culture Forum who allows the interviewee plenty of space to develop an argument)  as well as observations about inaccurate research, repetitive questioning and the interviewer’s remarkably cloth-eared inability to listen.  Marr’s irritability, his embarrassing lack of self-awareness and finally, the flailing efforts to land the knockout blow that rebounded and floored him (and shamed the BBC) instead.

The other potentially derailing incident to the course of the election was, of course, the (second, most recent) London Bridge terrorist attack that killed Saskia Jones, 23 and Jack Merritt, 25. We are now permitted to use the term ‘terrorist’, since none of the victims of this Islamist-inspired murdering spree were, so far as I know,  Israeli Jews.

Melanie Phillips has an article in yesterday’s Times (£), which for once, has received plaudits, almost without exception, below the line. I think that must be a first. Islamists are not the same as other prisoners. Doh!

“The terrorist attack by Usman Khan on a prisoner rehabilitation conference in London was made possible by two catastrophic and tragic misjudgments. The first was by the Court of Appeal, which changed Khan’s sentence. This had originally been detention for public protection with a minimum of eight years, after which he would have stayed in jail if the Parole Board considered him still dangerous.”

Melanie Phillips refers to Ian Acheson - here’s his article, also in The Times (£).  I must say that I have indeed heard of Mr Acheson's views and the fact that they had fallen on deaf ears, so I hope you’ll bear with me while I include an extract of a piece (written by me many years ago) possibly for this site - I can’t seem to find out exactly where it ended up.

“Instead of doing its job - ‘educate inform and entertain’ - the BBC seems to be part of a tacit collusion between politicians, adolescents and journalists who are desperately trying to convince themselves that Muslim communities, Muslim leaders and individuals of all degrees of intensity are thoroughly virtuous and completely unrelated and unconnected to Islamic State, which is nothing to do with Islam.  

They put out programmes that portray Muslims as ‘just like us’. Frequently they’re depicted as even better than us, because, while we’re inclined to be heathen, irreligious, self-serving and antisocial, Muslims are religious, selfless, inclusive and devout. The implication is always that Muslims are just like us, only more so, and better. Fictional plots in BBC dramas repeatedly feature Muslims as innocent victims of the white man’s prejudice and are wrongly suspected of a crime, which turns out to have been perpetrated by the bad white guy.

 In fact, it has occurred to me that using immigrants as the perpetual red-herring as they do in Scandi-noir productions can almost be seen as 'racist' in itself.

 “The fact that our prisons are stuffed to the gunwales with Muslims appears to be neither here nor there to the MSM. The fact that Muslim gangs of paedophiles and scammers are being prosecuted at a rate of knots seems to have passed them by. Our prisons are currently ruled by a Muslim mafia.  

I have heard, first-hand, the harrowing testimony of a former prison chaplain who was harassed, bullied and eventually hounded out of his position by prison Imams. When he took his case to the then Home Secretary John Reid, he was sent packing with an unrepeatable two-word phrase that means ‘go away’. Why is this not being exposed as it should be?

Nothing has changed, which probably indicates that I’m banging my head against a brick wall.

Now that the latest terrorist incident (coupled with another case of criminal sexual exploitation) has wedged a metaphorical foot in the door, thus tentatively allowing more open discussion of a formerly taboo topic, I am left wondering why Tommy Robinson is at best unacknowledged, and in some cases demonised, by bona fide, more mainstream journalist critics of Islam - Rod Liddle, Brendan O’Neill, Melanie Phillips and Douglas Murray? Are they all, dare I say it - snobs?

To finish what has turned out to be another longer than intended contribution, I have to mention another delicate matter that has been covered to some extent in the online press - it’s the political intervention of Jack Merritt’s father, whose pleas not to ‘politicise’ his son’s death have acquired a hollow ring. The bereaved, who must be going through agonising pain, should be actively discouraged by the media from making such emotional appeals in haste. In this case, Mr Merritt’s own strong political views have adversely affected any generosity of spirit he might have intended in making those unfortunate statements and tweets. It’s a tough thing to say, but tragedy shouldn’t automatically confer special dispensation upon the bereaved to say the unsayable or make inappropriate demands, as Brendan Cox has done or as the parents of the 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn who was tragically killed, appear to be doing. 

Contrast these examples, if you will, with the remarkable and unforgettable response of Gordon Wilson after his daughter Marie was killed by IRA terrorists in the Enniskillen Remembrance Day Bombing. 

Gordon Wilson's devout Christian faith inspired his refusal to make demands of others. I don’t know if the media has taken undue advantage of Mr Merritt’s sentiments, but he cannot speak for anyone other than himself. Many people, as well as his beloved son, have been hurt and traumatised by this and numerous other Islam-related incidents. 

Islamists are not like other prisoners, as Melanie Phillips so eloquently points out.  Define “Islamists” though - where does a Muslim become an Islamist? At what point? Is it a matter of degree?

As for locking them up - yes, to keep them away from the public, but not in prisons as they stand. Prisons are already in chaos. Muslim gangs are allegedly in control and are violently intimidating all who come near them. 

In any event, if there were to be a special confinement facility for Islamists - just think of the repercussions. Think of Guantanamo - think of H Block or whatever the dedicated IRA prison was called. 

Think of the ‘re-education’ of Uighurs in China. Think of the Muslims of Myanmar. Whenever anyone tries to ‘suppress’ Islam, it turns it into a bloody great ‘cause’.  People call it a recruiting sergeant. There has to be a more effective way of dealing with the situation.

I certainly don’t know the answer. Does anyone?

A little bit of politics

#TrollingTheGuardian

Audacity

Guido Fawkes supplies a missing measure for the Andrew Marr-Boris Johnson interview - 43% of the words spoken during 'the interview' were by Andrew Marr himself:

The BBC is finding it tricky to pin down Boris for an Andrew Neil interview, so when the PM agreed to go on Andrew Marr, the veteran broadcaster had to try out his best Paxman impression to make sure the interview rivalled Corbyn’s disastrous Neil grilling. Unfortunately, it just ended in a lot of shouting and the public none the wiser…

Guido’s now had time to crunch the numbers and worked out that of the 6,068 words spoken in the interview, only 3,465 were from Boris; meaning 43% of the 30-minute interview was taken up by Marr’s incomprehensible ranting – including one moment where he felt it necessary to remind viewers a staggering 8 times in just over a minute that the Tories have been in power for 10 years. (Factcheck – the Tories have been in office for 9 years). He even had the audacity to accuse Boris of wasting time chuntering…

Interrupterview; the transcriptions

Further to Craig’s remarks about the difficulty of transcribing the Andrew Marr v Boris Johnson ‘interrupterview’  I was amused by the Spectator’s attempt, which, aside from “con dine” instead of ‘condign’,  included several inappropriate full-stops, whereas the official transcription used the dash to indicate ‘unfinished’ sentence.

Of course, a transcription would be hard-pressed to convey the full extent of the interruptyness of the interrupterview; even inserting (interrupts) in between endings and beginnings as we often do here on ITBB doesn’t quite cut it. 

However, the full-stop version does have an absurdist, deadpan, robotic charm about it. It amused me anyway.

See over page.

A Question of Mark Mardell's Character

I don't think there is a mission or a vision or a Johnsonism. I think the only creed is having to win, having to get the very top job. Because when you press him - very few people get the chance, unfortunately - when he is pressed a little bit everything just kind of evaporates and falls apart. I don't think he sees beyond grasping power.

Those were the words chosen to end Mark Mardell's 'A Question of Character' piece on today's The World This Weekend. I think you'll agree that they won't have made Boris Johnson's day, had he been listening. Indeed, this whole Radio 4 profile wouldn't have made his day.  

That quote came for Sonia Purnell, a former reporting colleague turned Boris biographer, who was Mark's main 'talking head'. She appeared five times, two more than anyone else. Her contributions mainly focused on his "alpha male posturing" and "toxic masculinity" but also talked of his "necessity of winning at almost any cost" and his way of getting away with things "just by lying about it". I'm guessing they don't exchange Christmas cards these days.

The four other 'talking heads' in Mark Mardell's piece weren't must more helpful. 

There was, for instance, Boris-mocking comedian Michael Spicer, who said Boris has "soup" in his brain. Not helpful at all.

And pro-EU Tory peer and pollster Lord Haywood who (in Mark's words) "says the question of trust is vital" and that's "it's a problem for him", despite a certain "Well-that's-Boris mentality" among some voters.

'For balance', maybe, we also got Sir Alan Duncan, the retiring pro-EU Conservative MP who quite the government because he couldn't serve under Boris Johnson. Though he went along with Mark Mardell's 'Boris the Liar' theme, he put it down to being "just a sign of the times" and then said that Boris has "risen to the challenge" of being PM.

And, even more 'for balance', we got former Boris advisor Guto Harri, another pro-EU voice. Guto (ex of the BBC) was by far the nicest of Mark's 'talking heads' about Boris Johnson, praising him for being "emotionally hands-on" over knife crime in London and rejecting claims that he's "a liar". But even he was unhelpful to Boris in talking of his "ruthlessness...in some ways admirable...in others destructive" and then going on to criticise him for "getting into trouble with the courts, suspending Parliament, alienating members of his own family, kicking out or losing members, lifelong, respected members of his own party". 

Now, all of these non-Brexiteer 'talking heads' may have been right in their criticisms of 'Boris the Bottler' but I think Mark and The World This Weekend might at least have tried to feature one pro-Brexit voice or even an unequivocally pro-Boris voice. But no, the "lovable buffoon around town" got no fawning-over here. Quite the reverse. 

And Mark's hatchet-wielding narration dripped with irony and bunged in a fair few embarrassing-for-Boris clips and other embarrassments. And Mark didn't spare the details of "his messy personal life" either.  

And, being Mark Mardell, his commentary also included plenty of editorialising, such as:

But even before he was a politician he was the Telegraph's Brussels correspondent. Stories which played footsies with the facts were a hallmark of his style, exaggeration and invention at their heart.

It's been quite a day. What with this and Andrew Marr's Boris interview, surely even the wildest Corbynista outrider will be thinking happy thoughts about the BBC today?

Now, of course, what we need to do is to compare this to Mark's 'A Question of Character Piece' last week on Jeremy Corbyn, which began with the words "He's certainly come on as a social media campaigner" and "Jeremy Corbyn is giving every impression of loving this campaign, whether relishing the attacks upon him or appearing before adoring audiences of the Left".

The 'talking heads' last week were the critical John Crace of the Guardian, the wholly supportive Laura Parker of Momentum, the somewhat sceptical former Labour MP Chris Mullin, the ulta-loyal party chairman Ian Lavery and former Labour MP Stephen Pound who said that Jeremy Corbyn is "passionately pro-Palestinian" but not antisemitic, and that the two things shouldn't be "conflated" and that we shouldn't see Mr Corbyn as being "guilty" over this and that he can see him as PM. (I used to like Stephen Pound)

Three fulsome defenders, two not-very-hostile critics. Compare that to your Mark Mardell profile this week, Boris, and weep! (Or complain to the BBC).

As for Mark Mardell's narration, it was far less irony-sodden. He admitted he never saw JC as a party leader or PM, but found him "always friendly, always good to chat to". And, in editorialising mode,  "while there's a frequent accusation that others pull his strings the evidence suggests he does build consensus in his team...While he's a demon to some, he's hardly ruthless".

At least Mark gave the last word in his profile to the slightly sceptical left-wing ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin saying that JC has a difficulty "saying no to people". Yep, if anything, he's too nice.

It really has been a good day for the Corbynistas today, thanks to the BBC. I doubt they'll appreciate it though. 

Just to brighten the blog on a frosty night up north

Frost feathers on the opaque glass of a car wash. pic.twitter.com/qxaqi6xeQg

— Simon Spanton (@SimonGuy64) December 1, 2019

Has the BBC fact-checked John Pienaar?

The first comment on our new Advent open thread reads as follows: 

Mola Ram1 December 2019 at 18:16  

"After 10 years of Conservative rule blighted by austerity and Brexit-weariness, it takes an almost breathtaking audacity - hostile critics might say the brassiest neck in the business - to campaign for a fourth consecutive Tory term in office as the face of change. It takes, in other words, Boris Johnson."

The opening paragraph of John Pienaar’s article today smacks of personal opinion to set a particular tone rather than valuable political insight.

And the BBC's John Pienaar immediately follows that opening volley (with its strong echo of the "ten years" angle that Mr Marr was so vigorously pushing today) with a smidgen of sarcasm at the Tories' expense. 

And then - and we're still only a few paragraphs in - comes this: 

This isn't, however, easy to pull off. Mr Johnson has been a prominent MP and minister for much of that time - aside from, admittedly, a period away from Westminster while London mayor. 

Now, I know that John is a seasoned political reporter for the BBC, but one thing even I (a mere blogger) know is that Boris Johnson has been out of Parliament longer than he's been in Parliament over this period. 

And as for being a "minister for much of that time", until he became Prime Minister, Boris had only been a minister over the last "ten years" for...(drum roll)...less than two years.

Where's Chris Morris and his Reality Check to 'reality check' John Pienaar?

Dare I go on? What's next? (Live blogging!).

Ah, yes, John moved on from getting his facts wrong to being sarcastic about the Tories again. ("The PM did, after all, allow a decent interval (of maybe two or three hours) to pass after the attack before he began reciting Tory election promises of more police and tougher sentencing"). 

And on it went.

It's all very droll. Journalism as comedy. Radio 4 comedy, that is. 

Morecambe Bay birds

Morecambe Bay ‘Birds’ by Janet Sharples #lovemorecambe pic.twitter.com/OILDOV8quR

— Alistair Eagles (@alistaireagles) December 1, 2019

A Question of Bias

The BBC asks to be judged over time, or over a series. So let's look at how The World This Weekend is teeing up their leader profiles - a series they've called 'A Question of Character'.

First up, two weeks ago, came the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Mardell's introduction ran as follows:

Mark Mardell: And we look at the leader of the SNP, her opportunity in this election and how she's changed. 

Friend of Nicola Sturgeon: Nicola was, in fact, the schoolgirl who sat under the table reading a book at her own birthday party. I mean, she has really worked at it, and when you see her out in the crowds, I think she's just grown into herself. 

That's a nice, positive one.

Then last week came Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, and this Mark Mardell intro:

Mark Mardell: Over the next few weeks we'll be asking A Question of Character. Today, Jeremy Corbyn PM?

Jeremy Corbyn: A good leader doesn't just barge through a door and let it swing back in the faces of those following behind.

Again, not bad for Jeremy. 

And then today it was Boris Johnson's turn. And how did Mark's introduction go? Like this:

Mark Mardell: And we ask: Does the Prime Minister have a problem with trust?

Hmm. That's a question the BBC is asking a lot at the moment. It's not a helpful intro for Boris, is it (to put it mildly)?

*******

...on which very theme...

How about this for an opening headline on The World This Weekend today?

Mark Mardell: As tributes are paid to the London Bridge victims, the Prime Minister blames...(dramatic pause)...his political opponents. 

Ouch!

This was followed by a clip from Andrew Marr's interview with the PM (with Andrew yapping away). 

I know I was far from being the only one this morning who spotted that both Chuka Umunna and Baroness Shami Chakrabarti pulled exactly the same classic politician's trick of saying that they themselves refused to politicise the London terrorist attacks before doing precisely that by denouncing Boris Johnson for politicising it.

*******

So, two barbed-against-Boris framings in just one short introduction from Mark Mardell today. Fair enough or grossly biased?

Facebook backs the BBC

Breaking news..

This might unstiffen the BBC's resistance to at least ones of social media giant rivals slightly:

We’re aware of Conservative Party Facebook adverts using edited BBC content. This is a completely unacceptable use of BBC content which distorts our output and which could damage perceptions of our impartiality. We are asking the Conservatives to remove these adverts.

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) November 28, 2019

https://t.co/qPqJ7QzpQS

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) December 1, 2019

The Ten Year Itch

On an earlier thread Arthur T raised a question:

Did anyone count the number of times Marr said: "You've had ten years to ..."? To keep repeating an inaccurate figure in this way suggests the red mist had descended and his ability to structure the interview was lost.

Well, to ask another question: in the four years that we've had a Conservative government and the five previous years of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government (totally nine years rather than ten), has Andrew Marr even used the phrase "ten years" so often in a single interview? 

Anyhow, with the aid of the BBC's own transcript of the Boris interview, we can now do that count after all. 

Here are all the uses (by Andrew Marr) of the phrase 'ten years', as per that transcript:

• Your party has been in power for ten years.
• You’ve been in power for ten years! 
• The Conservative Party has been in power for ten years.
• You’ve been in power for ten years.
• You’re in power for ten years and you’ve done nothing about it in ten years.
• For ten years you’ve done nothing about it.
• In ten years you’ve done nothing about it.
• For ten years you have done nothing about it.
• For ten years you’ve done nothing to change the system or toughen it.
• You’ve had ten years in government to get this regime for violent criminal terrorists right and as a government you have patently failed that.
• You had ten years in office to do something about it and you didn’t. Ten years.
• Let’s look at what happened to him in the last ten years where he was in the last ten years which is in the prison system which has been.
• It’s not a new Conservative administration; it is the Conservative Party which has been in power for ten years.
• Do you know how many magistrates and crown courts you have closed as a party in the last ten years?
• So you freezed (sic) it for ten years now you say we should be grateful cos it’s ending?
• We need to see some progress don’t we because after ten years there’s been...

So the answer to Arthur T's question is 16 times. And the total number of times the phrase 'ten years' was used is 19 times.

I've a feeling that Andrew Marr was pursuing a bit of an angle here!

Disaster Sunday

I think Andrew Marr has gawn off his trolley. Where are the mental health services when you need them? It started badly, with the Guardian's Helen Pidd preemptively admonishing us to insist that the London Bridge ‘incident’ shouldn’t be politicised - as if terrorism in the name of Allah isn’t inherently political.

    

In his “Making us feel proud” post, Craig transcribes Marr’s weirdly ambiguous intro, which lays itself open to being taken out of context, fiddled with and misconstrued for our entertainment. 

If I were as badly behaved as the media and took things out of context and fiddled with their intended messages, I’d seriously query why a lethal act of terrorism should make us feel proud of where we live. Of course, we know what he meant. He was proud of the ‘have a go’ British public who tackled the soldier of Allah with a tusk and a fire extinguisher. Not that that's anything to do with where we live.

I think everyone in their right mind would agree that this was a car crash of an interview. In fact, the whole programme was a disaster. I’d say Andrew Marr emerged from the car crash with the more serious injuries.

As far as Boris is concerned, he might try pitting the efficacy and wisdom of attacking one's opponent against enthusiastically promoting the merits of one's own policies.  As far as I’m concerned, both party leaders are wrong on this. 

The Labour Party wastes considerable energy slagging off ‘Tory Toffs’, which just shoves the politics of envy into the spotlight. Not a good look. Yes, we know all about the class war, which nowadays comes across as dated and uninspired; concentrating on their fantastical spending spree, that’s where most Labour votes will come from, sad to say.

It might be necessary for the Conservatives to slag off Labour’s economic naivety, its racism, hypocrisy and downright nastiness, but arguably that would be would be best left to others. It doesn’t sit well with Boris somehow. I imagine he’s been advised to treat the public as a bit thick and is primarily trying to hammer home the folly of falling for Labour’s bribery and corruption, but we need to hear much more of the Conservative Party’s positives from Boris. What are they, apart from getting something done?

I wonder how Andrew Marr is feeling this afternoon? And the producers of the show? Do they think it went well? Do they think it was effective or even wise to let Marr talk over the PM, prevent him from speaking and to reiterate accusations about ‘ten years’ over and over? It reached new levels of appalling. The complaints will be pouring in to BBC HQ - how will they respond? Will they respond?

Why didn’t Marr mention anything about “ten years ago” - or even ten months ago - to the smug little Baroness? Yes, she was there to discuss the question of sentencing, but the elephant in the room was so pungent that even if Marr couldn’t see it he must have caught a whiff of the stench. Baroness Whitewash, what did you think of the Chief Rabbi’s intervention in the 'non-existent' antisemitism question?

I bet you a fiver she got the BBC to sign a ‘don’t mention the war’ clause before agreeing to appear. 

Easy hits

The weekly 'special advisors' election segment on Paddy's Broadcasting House has, as you know, been controversial - well, with us anyhow. 

The first issue concerned representation, with question marks hanging over the presence of a weekly Liberal Democrat former advisor alongside the former Conservative and Labour advisors. Was that over-promoting the Lib Dems? Well, this week the Lib Dems were dropped and a former SNP advisor (Geoff Aberdein, who was - to Paddy's delight - in Aberdeen) brought in instead. Wonder which other parties will appear? (If Raheem Kassam, former advisor to Nigel Farage, appears I'll eat George Galloway's hat). 

The second issued concerned the 'supporter' status of the Conservative and Labour former advisors, in that the the Conservatives are represented by somewhat who doesn't support the Conservatives while Labour is represented by who supports Jeremy Corbyn. 

Jo Tanner and Simon Fletcher were back again this week, Simon being pleasantly on-message and positive for Jeremy and Jo being all 'detached and impartial' and downbeat about the Tories. 

Cue a post I prepared yesterday, before unexpectedly having to go out and party, but which l plonk here instead:

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Regular readers might be delighted to learn that today's weekend edition of the BBC's would-be-hip Electioncast podcast, presented by The Great Chris Mason, featured two guests - former Gordon Brown/Ed Miliband advisor, no Labour Party peer, Stewart Wood and former advisor to Boris Johnson, Jo Tanner. 

Yes, that Jo Tanner - the one Paddy's Broadcasting House is using as 'the Conservative-supporting special advisor', despite her not being a Conservative or a Conservative supporter. 

Here again, Jo emphasised the fact that she doesn't vote 'Tory' and doesn't support the 'Tories'. Stewart, as I may have mentioned, is a serving Labour Party peer. 

Go figure how that works, BBC impartiality-wise!

On Electioncast, she criticised Boris's reponse to the London terrorist attack on several fronts, calling him "opportunistic". She didn't think he was "quite right" to say what he said and didn't think bringing up police numbers was "necessary" either. Labour's Lord Wood agreed that Boris's response "left a bad taste in the mouth", though he was less strong in his criticism of Boris, saying we "shouldn't overegg" it.

Really, BBC?

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It's quite something really, isn't it? Wonder where Jo will turn up next on the BBC? Somewhere with Ash Sarkar perhaps?

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I must say though that former SNP chief-of-staff Geoff Aberdein was very engaging. I hope he reappears.

Paddy: Geoff Aberdein, do you think that the leader of the SNP would have given an interview to the BBC is she thought that the leader of the Conservatives was not going to? 

Geoff: Well, yes I do. And the reason I do is because, as somebody that advised the SNP for a number of years, it's a great advantage to being a Scottish politician going on a UK-wide TV audience (sic) because you get much more coverage. But, also, you can bank upon - and I'm sorry to be a little bit rude here - hoping that the interviewer doesn't know much about the intracacies of Holyrood politics as much as they do about Westminster politics. We very much viewed it as an easy hit.

I've seen so many UK-wide BBC interviews with the SNP over the years (Andrew Neil excepted) that that's not exactly news, but it lays out a real failing in our Westminster/Salford-dominated BBC. 

Praise from Tom London

I see that Andrew Marr is busy re-tweeting people who are defending/praising his Boris interview. I had to smile that one of them is arch-Corbynite Tom London - one of the Left's most hardcore Beeb-bashers. ("Best interview Andrew Marr has done with a Tory leader IMO. Just really wish we had seen much more of this from Marr and others since 2010"). Maybe Andrew is safe after all, come the revolution!

What about Islamophobia?

The following excerpts from articles by Charles Moore (Spectator) and Brendan O’Neill (Spiked) are probably regarded as ‘controversial’. Whether or not that is so, the fact that they felt they needed to write them indicates that ‘stating the obvious’ has become virtually taboo ever since the media and political classes tacitly colluded to pander to political correctness and bow to the undeclared blasphemy law. 

Charles Moore

“There may well be people in the Conservative party who have an irrational hatred of Muslims, but the term ‘Islamophobia’ should be absolutely resisted. Unlike anti-Semitism, this is a concocted concept. A strand of Muslim thought sees all criticism of the prophet Mohammed and his faith as blasphemy and labours worldwide to ban it. Such Muslims are driven mad by the way Jews can cry ‘racism’ when they are attacked, whereas they cannot. 

But in fact this is fair, because Jewishness is usually inherited and is not necessarily related to what you believe. Islam is. All belief systems must accept the danger of hatred, ridicule and contempt as the price for coexisting in a free society.”

Brendan O'Neill

The left, including the left that currently runs the Labour Party, is myopically devoted to distracting attention from the Islamist threat. ‘What about the far right?’, they’ll say. Such cynical and spineless whataboutery wilfully overlooks that the far right has not killed anywhere near 500 people in Europe over the past five years — Islamists, on the other hand, have. ‘Don’t look back in anger’, we are told after Islamist attacks. In short, lay a flower, be sad for a day, and then move on — whatever you do, don’t talk about it.

74

One gem from this morning's Andrew Marr/Boris Johnson interview was this moment when Andrew Marr was trying so hard to impersonate Jeremy Paxman that he missed the fact that Boris had just answered the question:

Boris Johnson: As for your question about how many others there are, there are probably about 74... 
Andrew Marr: (interrupting) OK. You are trying to avoid my question...
Boris Johnson: No, I'm not.
Andrew Marr: .. by carrying on talking. Let me just ask you again. Let me ask you again. 
Boris Johnson: I'm answering your question. You said how many others. There are 74. 
Andrew Marr: 74? 74 other people?
Boris Johnson: 74. Yes. 

"Let me talk about prejudice of all kinds..."

Despite implying that he wasn't a fan of the 'gotcha!' style of interviewing last week, here was one of Andrew's 'Islamophobia' questions today:

Let me talk about prejudice of all kinds. There was a prominent Conservative who said, "To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia, fear of Islam, seems a natural reaction and it is exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture, to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques, it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness to unbelievers." That was Boris Johnson. Do you stand by that? 

That quote, if you're wondering, was from the Spectator in 2005, a week after Islam-inspired terrorists killed 52 people and injured 784 people in London on 7/7.

Into combat

(h/t MB)

John Simpson is already sounding the trumpets:

Enjoyed @AndrewMarr9’s combative interview with Boris Johnson, but if BJ doesn’t now commit to a grilling from @afneil, he’ll be vulnerable to Thatcher’s old accusation of being ‘frit’.

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) December 1, 2019

A sharing of views

This morning's The Andrew Marr Show was so striking that I thought I'd share a selection of views on it with you from my social media feed. Enjoy!

Toby Young: Andrew Marr talking over Boris Johnson, not letting him answer the question, hectoring him, asking him if he’d like to apologise for everything under the sun… this isn’t a political interview. It’s bear-baiting. Can’t we have a little less heat and a bit more light?

Guido Fawkes: Someone re-boot Marr he just keeps saying “10 years”.

Dan Hodges: Andrew Marr is now becoming a parody of Andrew Marr becoming a parody of Jeremy Paxman.

A Libertarian Rebel: The difference between Andrew Neil &Andrew Marr is that Neil asks politicians they can't answer and then allows them to show it, while Marr asks them questions they can answer, but then doesn't allow them to show it. Neil is a journalist. Marr is an activist.

David Buik: And in the Blue corner the PM and in the Red corner - Andrew Marr! What a shambles! It is about as bad tempered an interview I have ever heard! Thoroughly visceral and nasty - just awful!

Dan Hodges: Marr now speaking so much anyone tuning in would think he's a guest on the Boris Johnson Show.

Dan Hodges: "You're chuntering". Marr just resorting to abuse now.

Dan Hodges: I don't want to come across like I'm channeling my inner-Corbynite. But I really do think when this election is over there needs to be serious examination of what's happening to BBC political programming. That was farcical.

Toby Young: Marr: Are you worried Donald Trump may something embarrassing?

Boris: Well… Marr: I’m sorry, we’re out of time. Boris: Let me answer the question… Marr: I’m sorry, we’re out of time.

[Craig - That really is what happened!]

Dan Hannan: I’m normally a Marr fan, but he let himself down there. What is the point of asking someone onto your programme - let alone the PM - if you’re going to start talking across them two words into every answer they give?

And, by way of contrast, here's the BBC's Stephen Nolan:

Well done Andrew Marr. Great interview with the PM. 

Up for discussion

Topic-wise, here were the subjects asked about by Andrew Marr this morning to each guest.

Chuka Umunna - The London terrorist attack, the Lib Dem's focus on revoking, and (mostly) election tactics. 

Shami Chakrabarti - The London terrorist attack, Ministry of Justice cuts, supervision orders, the causes of terrorism, Jeremy Corbyn's foreign policy views, political decisions and politicising the attacks, and prisons. 

Boris Johnson - The London terrorist attack, Conservative cuts to the Ministry of Justice, NHS cuts, social care cuts, cuts to libraries, poverty and benefit cuts, Brexit, spending, Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, whether he'd do an interview with Andrew Neil, whether he'd meet Donald Trump this week.

You will notice that Andrew asked Boris Johnson about Islamophobia in the Conservative Party but didn't ask Shami Chakrabarti about antisemitism in the Labour Party.

If you recall, Andrew didn't ask Jeremy Corbyn about antisemitism in the Labour Party last week either.

Interruption time

For old time's sake I thought I'd count up the number of interruptions each interviewee suffered on this morning's The Andrew Marr Show. 

Here are my totals:

Chuka Umunna - 14

Shami Chakrabarti - 5 

Boris Johnson - 91

If you divide the number of interruptions by the length of the interview to get a better sense of the frequency of the interruptions (i.e. work out an interruption coefficient), this works out as follows:

Chuka Umunna - 1.9

Shami Chakrabarti - 0.4

Boris Johnson - 3.3

Which means, if you take it as a measure of the toughness of each interview, Boris got an eight times tougher interview than Shami...which feels about right. 

A strange business

If you switched on BBC One arround 10 o'clock this morning you will have seen Andrew Marr delivering a long, impassioned monologue. The odd thing about it was that there was also this big, blond chap sitting opposite him who looked uncannily like PM Boris Johnson. I've no idea what he was doing there, and he kept trying trying to talk over Andrew's monologue. How rude!

Someone else's problem

As MailOnline's deputy political editor tweeted earlier:

This Andrew Marr interview with Boris Johnson is going to be an absolute nightmare to transcribe.

I certainly won't be transcribing it.

Thankfully, some unhappy soul in The Andrew Marr Show team will have to do it. The programme produces transcripts every Sunday. Hope they manage to finish it before midnight!

Very, very clever indeed

Is Andrew Marr right?

In terms of what Labour can do about this, at this stage in the campaign they obviously can't change their leader, but the offer to WASPI women, to a lot of women, a lot of money to a lot of women who are very angry, seemed to me to be a very, very clever election move indeed and could change things. 

Making us feel proud

Here was Andrew Marr's introduction this morning:

Good morning to you. A suicide vest, or that's what it looked like. People down, bleeding, dying. And three bystanders, a Polish cook armed with a narwhal tusk he'd taken off the wall, one with a fire extinguisher, and one with nothing, go into battle. One of those who died was a young man working hard to rehabilitate prisoners. Jack Merritt's father described him overnight as a beautiful spirit who always took the side of the underdog. In the middle of this election campaign, there hasn't been much to make us feel proud of where we live but this certainly did. 

Late November Open Thread

Ah, the return of an old friend...

Cheers! And here's to a brand new, Ofcom-approved Open Thread!

And thank you so much for your comments.