The Economist
Aaron Bastani on the ‘Independents’ as the Old, Blairite Austerity Politics
In this 20 minute long video from Novara Media, presenter Aaron Bastani utterly demolishes the new ‘Independent’ grouping of MPs. He shows that rather than being any kind of new politics, they are simply the old, Blairite and Tory politics neoliberal politics. They are radically out of tune with what people really want, especially millennials, who have left much worse off than the preceding generation by the same politics the Blairites and Tories were pushing. And they’re being promoted by the media because they represent the old style of politics the media like: austerity with a smiley face.
Labour MPs All Going Before They’re Pushed
Bastani begins the video by describing how the departure of the seven Labour MPs – Gavin Shuker, Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffee, Luciana Berger, Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, who left to form the Independents – wasn’t actually a surprise. They were all loud critics of Corbyn, and almost all of them had been subject to motions of ‘no confidence’ or were facing deselection. They were then joined the next day by Joan Ryan, another critic of Corbyn, who had also lost a ‘no confidence’ motion. They were then joined the day after that by Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston from the Tories, who complained about the old, ‘broken’ politics of Labour versus Tories.
Independents Not Democratic, and Not a Political Party
The Independents, however, aren’t a political party as such. Which means that they don’t get the Short Money given to opposition parties. This could add up to hundreds of thousands of pounds. They also don’t have to conform to the same standards as proper political parties, although they claim that they will try to do so as best they can. They also don’t have a membership. You can give them your name and contact details, and make a donation, but there is no mechanism for creating a mass organisation where the membership can determine policy. It’s a private organisation more than a political party. But what concerns Bastani the most is that they don’t want to hold bye-elections, because this would ‘crush democracy’. It’s doublespeak, and the truth is that they don’t want bye-elections because they’d lose.
Angela Smith’s Racism
He then goes on to describe how the seven founding ex-Labour members claim that they were driven out of the party by its racism, only for Angela Smith to say within hours the most racist thing he’s ever heard a politician say on television. To show how badly their launch went, Bastani produces some viewing figures. On the Monday the video of their launch had 75,000 views on Twitter. The video of Angela Smith’s apology got 700,000 views. But the video of Smith making her racist comments got even more – 1.5 million views. And while the Mirror and the Guardian wanted to splash on a video by Tom Watson, which got 500 shares on Facebook, Novara’s video of their own Ash Sarkar showing the corruption at the heart of the group – she challenged smith on her chairmanship of a parliamentary group supporting water privatisation, funded largely by the water companies – got 200,000 views. Chris Leslie then appeared later on the Beeb to sort this out. Where once again he talked about their love of democracy. A love so strong, that they don’t want to hold bye-elections, thus disenfranchising the hundreds of thousands of people, who voted for these 11 MPs. They claimed to be anti-racist, but set a new record by being racist ‘pretty much by lunchtime’.
People More Politically Engaged, Not Less
But their fundamental principle is that people don’t want Labour or Tory, but what Labour used to be 15 years ago. But at the 2017 election, 82 per cent of the population voted for either of the two main parties – Tories or Labour. That was the highest percentage the parties had since 1979. In 2010 only 65 per cent of the public voted Labour or Tory. The idea that people are turning away from the two main parties when there is a clear choice, socialism or neoliberalism, isn’t true. And the claim that people are disengaged from politics doesn’t stand up either. Voter turn-out was higher in the 2017 election, just as it was higher during the Scottish reference in 2014, and the Brexit referendum in 2016. Which was the biggest democratic exercise in British history. More people voted in that than in any previous general election or referendum. And Labour now has more than 500,000 members – more than it has had in a generation. The same is true for the SNP. More people are members of political parties now than at any point in Bastani’s lifetime. And if people genuinely do want centrist politics, how is it that the Lib Dems, who got only 8 per cent of the vote in 2015, got even less in 2017? This was despite the ‘media Einsteins’ telling us all that they would do well against the two main parties in a Brexit election. It’s almost as if, says Bastani, that the media don’t know what they’re talking about when they claim to know what the public wants.
Labour Policies Massively Popular
And then there are the policy issues. Labour’s policies are very popular. They’re right at the top of the list of why people voted Labour. But they don’t want to imitate these popular policies. Chris Leslie in an interview with New Scientist said he didn’t want a top tax rate of 50 per cent. That’s not a Corbynite policy, it’s one of Gordon Brown’s. He was also against stopping tuition fees and rejects the renationalisation of the railways, both extremely popular policies. These aren’t just popular with Labour voters, but also with Tories and Lib Dems. And polls conducted by IPPR And Sky News did polls at the end of last year which showed clear majorities of the British public wanting the Bank of England to keep house prices down and a minimal presence, at least, of workers on company boards. People don’t want centrist policies. They’re moving left, as shown on poll after poll.
Millennials Left-Wing because of Neoliberalism
And there’s a clear generational difference. At the last Labour split in 1981 when the SDP was formed, there was a clear movement to the right and post-war socialist policies had become unpopular. And yet when this split happened, the Economist carried an article decrying the popularity of socialism amongst millennials both in America and Britain. This meant ‘Generation Z’ young people, who want the government to address climate change as a fundamental part of 21st century politics. And these millennials despised the Tories, as shown by footage of an anti-Tory march. These are going to be the voters of the 2020s. And they’re not going to be bought off. They’re not left-wing because of something the read in a book, or because they want to be countercultural. They’re left-wing because their living standards and expectations are lower than their parents, they have a less expansive welfare state, they’re going to have higher levels of debt and earn less, and they will have to deal with systemic crises like demographic aging and climate change. They rightly feel that they’re screwed over. And the idea that these same people are going to agree with Chris Leslie’s idea of politics is probably the stupidest thing you’ll hear this year. And this is only February.
The Failure of Centrist Parties in France, America, Italy, Spain and Canada
But since 2015 centrist politicians have been hammered in election like Hillary Clinton in 2016. Emmanuel Macron in France was hailed as the saviour of French centrism, despite only taking 24 per cent of the vote in the first round. Now he’s the most unpopular president in French history after months of protests by the gilets jaunes, which have been met with tear gas attacks by the gendarmes, which have left people losing their eyes and their lives. Then there’s Matteo Renzi of the Partito Democratico, the Democratic Party, the Italian sister party to Britain’s Labour. In 2014 they took 42 per cent of the vote. But he was out within two years, having lost a referendum by 20 points. And in the last election the party lost half of their senators, leaving Italy governed by the Five Star Movement and the far-right Liga. Then there’s the example of the PSOE’s Pedro Sanchez. The PSOE is the Spanish equivalent of the Labour party. He’s also suffered mass protests and this week Spain called new general elections, which his party are certain to lose. Centrism is not popular in Europe or America, so the Independents have to turn to Canada’s Justin Trudeau. But Trudeau is now less popular in his country than Donald Trump in the US. Not that the media pushing ‘centrism’ will tell you this.
The Centrist Real Policy: More Austerity
The unpopularity of centrist politics is due to the fact that they still haven’t solved the problems of global capitalism created by the 2008 crash. They believed that financialisation would create the economic growth that would support public services. But financialisation hasn’t created growth since 2008. And as they can’t create prosperity and tackle income inequality, all they’ve have to give us is austerity ‘with a nice smiley face’.
Labour Splitters against Iraq Inquiry, For Welfare Cuts
And not only do the eight former Labour MPs have Brexit in common, they also voted against an independent inquiry into Iraq. A million people have been affected by the war, along with those, who suffered under ISIS, and Iranian influence has expanded across the Middle East. The idea that Iraq is irrelevant is not only absurd, it is a disgrace. People have died, and it has made an already volatile region even more so. And Britain is directly responsible. The former Labour MPs also abstained on the vote of welfare reform before Corbyn came to power. They do not stand for a moral foreign policy, or for a more just social system at home.
Their politics are a mixture of careerism and opportunism, and their opposition to Brexit actually makes a new deal more likely. They are driven by fundamental democratic principles, but won’t stand for a bye-election. No members, no policies, no party democracy, no vision. Bastani states that this isn’t the future of politics, it’s the past, and the worst aspects at that. He looks forward to sensible people joining them, because they’re going to be found out sooner or later. And if we want to establish the primacy of socialist ideas, he says, then bring it on.
Andrew Neil’s ‘This Week’ BBC Show Axed
Last week was not a good one for Andrew Neil, the presenter of the Beeb’s politics shows ‘This Week’ and ‘The Daily Politics’. It was reported on ITV News on Friday that his show, ‘This Week’, was being axed. The article about it in this weekend’s I for 16-17th February 2019, by Keiran Southern on page 16, entitled, ”This Week’ ends as Neil quits his late-night show’ read
The BBC’s long-running politics show This Week is to end after presenter Andrew Neil announced he was stepping down.
The BBC1 show, which airs on Thursdays after Question Time, will be taken off air this summer when its current series ends, the corporation said.
Neil has fronted the show since it began in 2003 and regular guests include the former Tory MP, Michael Portillo, and Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott.
Fran Unsworth, BBC’s director of news, said: “We couldn’t imagine This Week without the inimitable Andrew Neil, one of Britain’s best political interviewers. After 16 years, Andrew is bowing out of late-night presenting on the show, at the top of his game.”
Neil will continue to present Politics Live on Thursdays, Ms Unsworth added, and the BBC wants to keep the 69-7ear-old “at the heart” of its political coverage.
This Week is known for its informal look at politics, while Ms Abbott and Mr Portillo formed an unlikely TV double act, despite being on opposite sides of the political divide.
The announcement comes amid uncertainty surrounding the BBC’s news output – it is under pressure to cut £80m from its budgets and to attract younger audiences.
Earlier this week, BBC journalists wrote to the broadcaster’s director-general to oppose the decision to shorten its News At Ten programme after it emerged it would be cut by 10 minutes to make way for youth programming and Question Time.
Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and other foreign correspondents have asked Lord Tony Hall to reconsider.
Last year, Sunday Politics, hosted by Sarah Smith, was axed and replaced by Politics Live, which airs Monday to Friday.
Other people, who are sick to death of the Beeb’s right-wing Tory bias, including Andrew Neil, are actually quite delighted and amused. The good fellow at Crewe, who does the Zelo Street blog, posted a piece on it on Friday, whose title said it all ‘Andrew Neil Nearly Out the Door’. He noted that despite Hall defending Neil over his ‘crazy cat woman’ remark to the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, the cancellation of one of Neil’s vehicles shows that the comment and the outrage it sparked has had an effect.
The deputy political editor of the Heil on Sunday, Harry Cole, was furious, tweeting
“A bloody outrage. Will only give succour to Corbynistas and sad sacks like Jukes and Carole who are modern equivalent of green ink dickheads who pester management. Since when did boss class start listening to loons before the viewers? Bring back #ThisWeek and make @afneil DG”. Which brought forth the reply from Peter Jukes
Harry Cole defending Andrew Neil, and desperately trying not to look like a member of the boss class.
Rather more damaging to Brillo and his supposed impartiality was another photo Carold Cadwalladr unearthed, showing Neil in the company of the former Ulster Unionist MP, David Burnside, who was formerly the PR man to Cambridge Analytica shareholder, Tchenguiz, who was in his turn the publicity man for Dmitryo Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the FBI. And Nigel Farage, now desperately trying to claw his way back into British politics with his wretched Brexit Party.
Zelo Street also noted that this was in addition to the discomfort Neil was bringing the Beeb with his continued association with the Spectator, now increasingly Alt Right, which specializes in climate change denial, pro-Brexit propaganda, and vicious islamophobia from pundits like Douglas Murray. As well as the snobbery and elitism of James Delingpole and anti-Semitism and Fascist propaganda from their other long-running contributor, Taki. Who a few weeks ago embarrassed the magazine by praising the Greek neo-Nazi group, Golden Dawn, as just ‘patriotic Greeks’, who were just a bit rough around the edges. Like when one of them murdered left-wing journalist, perhaps, or when the attack and demolish market stalls belonging to illegal immigrants and attack and beat asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East.
The Zelo Street article concluded
In any case, Andrew Neil should be grateful that he’s been allowed more or less free rein to reinvent himself as a broadcast journalist after falling out with Rupert Murdoch. Now he’s got more dosh than he knows what to do with, it’s time to yield to youth.
He’s at the top of his game? Good. Then he may be remembered well. Time to go.
See: http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/02/brillo-almost-out-of-bbc-door.html
Unsworth’s cancellation of his show, rather than handing it over to someone else to present, also says something about the show’s audience. It’s viewers are clearly people, who want it to be helmed by an older White man, whose backgrounds is very much in establishment, centre-right journalism: Neil was editor of the Sunday Times and The Economist. And Zelo Street has quoted other journos at the Spectator that he is another Thatcher cultist, who wishes Maggie was still around running the country. Presumably it’s the same kind of audience that avidly supports John Humphries on Radio 4’s Today programme, another massively overpaid, right-wing White man of mature years. Which would indicate that the audience for these two is also largely made up of right-wing, very establishment White men who are middle-aged to elderly.
It seems to me that Neil’s show needn’t be axed, but could easily be handed over to someone else, someone younger, who was rather more impartial, or at least less publicly biased. It struck me that the team on the Beeb’s breakfast news could probably do it, Charlie Stayt, Naga Manchetti and Louis Minchin. And the rise of the new left-wing media on the internet has show what very incisive minds there are well outside of the establishment media. Like Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar, and The Canary’s Kerry-Ann Mendoza and Steve Topple. They’re all young, Sarkar and Mendoza are both BAME, while Topple definitely had a countercultural appearance with his Mohican coiffure. But they’re all very shrewd reports, who keenly analysed and dissected the news. And their example shows that out there is a vast pool of talent, which is currently being ignored by the current media political establishment.
Of course the Beeb’s refusal to appoint someone else to present the show may also be partly based from their experience of what happened to Newsnight after Paxo left: its audience collapsed. But rather than cut back on current news reportage and analysis altogether, the Beeb could actually launch a replacement instead, presented by younger people and aimed at younger people. You know, all the millennials and younger, who are trying to make their voices heard in a political climate dominated by the old and middle-aged. The people a genuinely functioning democracy needs to get involved and interested in political debate.
But I’m sure this would be a step too far for the Beeb. You’d have the establishment media whining that the Corporation was dumbing down, that it was ‘Yoof TV’ after the various tasteless disasters in youth programming spawned in the 1990s by Janet Street-Porter and others of her ilk. As well as the more serious fact that the establishment is absolutely terrified of millennials and what the Victorians used to refer to as ‘the rising generation’ because they’re generally more left-wing than their elders in the political establishment. You know, all those pesky kids in America and Britain, who are backing Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn against the corporatists in the Democrat Party, Trump and the Republicans, and Tweezer, the Tories and the Blairites over here. Young people, who want socialism rather than the tired, destructive Neoliberalism of the past forty years.
But the political, media and industrial establishment is absolutely petrified of them and their views. They don’t want them to be heard. And so they’d rather axe one of Neil’s shows than hand it over to them. Which shows how paralyzed the Beeb is in trying to hang on to its aging, establishment audience at the expense of trying to bring on board young, and potentially radical talent.
The Economist misrepresents MMT
I have read the articles that The Economist published on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in the current edition of the liberal-leaning magazine (here and there). I am not happy with the reporting, which includes false statements in general and also misrepresentations of what MMT is.
First of all, let me point out that MMT is not a “left-wing doctrine”, as claimed by the paper. Defining a doctrine as something that is taught, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary does, means that MMT is indeed a doctrine – but so is neoclassical (mainstream) economics. What I do not agree with is “left-wing”. MMT is a scientific theory about how money “works” – how it is created and destroyed, how it is spent and received and what follows from this.
In my own book on “Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics”, which was published by Routledge in 2017, I discuss the balance sheet approach to macroeconomics that MMT truly is. Focusing on the Eurozone, there is a lot of discussion of money creation, but there is nothing political in it apart from the usual presuppositions – that we want full employment and price stability. If somehow this constitutes “left-wing” politics then it is only fair to say that the current mainstream approach is “right-wing” politics – or is it not?
I think that The Economist makes a grave error when it mistakes a scientific theory, which is falsifiable, for a “left-wing doctrine” (that is not). We need to talk about what money is, where it comes from, what it does, and how it is destroyed. We need to talk about how it changes the way that people think and act. We need to discuss the legal dimension as well. All of this cannot happen as long as The Economist claims – wrongly – that MMT is a doctrine.
The other issue that I’d like to point out is that there are many statements in the articles on MMT that are plain wrong or confused or made by people who have no authority. Take this paragraph, for instance:
Jonathan Portes of King’s College, London, points out that under mmt a country facing a combination of weak growth and high inflation, as Britain did in 2011-12, would require spending cuts rather than the increased stimulus called for by Keynes.
Who is Jonathan Portes? I have never heard of him. Given his statement I do not think that he understands MMT, so why would The Economist let him act as an interpreter for MMT? Couldn’t they find an MMT economist and ask them what MMT economists would have counseled in Britain in 2011-12? This statement construct an MMT straw man, and a clumsy one at best. “Under MMT”? MMT is not a policy regime, but a theory of how money works. The UK cannot be “under MMT” or “off MMT” since MMT is a description of reality and not a policy proposal.
Apparently, the writer believes that since neoclassical economics supports neoliberal society, the same must be true for other theories. That is wrong. Where neoclassical theory is normative – it tells you how things should be: free markets, no/little government interference, etc. – MMT is descriptive. Once you have understood how money works you will find that it should be much easier than you thought to attack unemployment and to achieve price stability, but that is not MMT.
You can build policy proposals using the insights of MMT, but then these are not “MMT”. They have “MMT inside” in that they rely on the framing of MMT. Policy proposals based on MMT include The Green New Deal, the Job Guarantee, the Euro Treasury and many more.
The last issue I want to raise has to do with the way the article misrepresents MMT. Here is a paragraph which covers what supposed is MMT:
Some radicals go further, supporting “modern monetary theory” which says that governments can borrow freely to fund new spending while keeping interest rates low. Even if governments have recently been able to borrow more than many policymakers expected, the notion that unlimited borrowing does not eventually catch up with an economy is a form of quackery.
MMT does not say “that governments can borrow freely to fund new spending while keeping interest rates low”. There is no MMT author that I know that has said something like this, and I have been around for ten years. There is no paper or book where you can find this, and I challenge The Economist to show me their source. If they can’t I accuse them of sloppy reporting and misrepresenting a scientific theory.
What is the problem with that sentence? That is very easy to answer: the framing. MMT economists know that the government does not have to borrow in order to spend and therefore does not “fund new spending”. Actually, it can’t even do it, even if it wants to. In a monetary system with a sovereign currency, which the UK has, the government just spends the money by crediting the account of the seller’s bank with reserves. This is the Bank of England’s job.
The Treasury has a publication which confirms this story.
5 Funding
5.1 The framework for public expenditure control
5.1.1 Most public expenditure is financed from centrally agreed multi-year budgets administered by the Treasury, which oversees departments’ use of their budget allocations.
There you have it: “Public expenditure is financed from […] budgets administered by the Treasury”. It does not say: Public expenditure is financed from bond issuance. It does not say: Public expenditure is financed from taxes.
So, in an enlightened world where science helps society to make the right choices, you would point out that government spending in the UK is not financed through either taxation or bond issuance. That is a technical insight that is falsifiable. The Parliament can ask the Treasury whether this is true or not and have it explained to the public if it feels like this is a good idea.
As John Maynard Keynes once said: “I give you the toast of the Royal Economic Society, of economics and economists, who are the trustees not of civilization, but of the possibility of civilization”. Whether a society is civilized depends, among other things, on the way that scientific debates are conducted. The Economist just put the UK debate on progressive economic policy on a slippery slope, claiming that a particular school of economics science constitutes “doctrine” and then misrepresenting that school’s views. They should know better than this.
THE ECONOMIST on DiEM25 & the European Spring: “Varoufakis Sans Frontières”
In a warm office in Berlin’s trendy Kreuzberg district, Charlemagne is trying to persuade Yanis Varoufakis that he is a politician. “It’s a necessity. I really dislike running and asking people for votes,” protests the Greek economist when asked about European Spring, his new transnational political party. Does he think of himself as a politician? “No. The moment I do, shoot me.” Apparently inadvertently, Mr Varoufakis won his seat in the Greek parliament in 2015, became finance minister, took on the European economic establishment and failed. After six months, he discarded the chains of office in pique. “If you want to be a manager, you can work for Goldman Sachs,” he sighs.
Not a politician? That evening, in an old warehouse in Berlin’s east, Mr Varoufakis takes to the stage before a young, bookish, international audience at the launch of European Spring’s manifesto for May’s elections to the European Parliament. Perched on the edge of his seat, he seems every bit the vote-wrangler. His right hand clasps the microphone, the left one depicts trillions of euros: slicing and restructuring debts, swishing from side to side to illustrate giant German surpluses, fingers flickering to imitate the vicissitudes of lily-livered social democrats.
It is easy to mock Mr Varoufakis. As Greek finance minister, he hectored Eurocrats for their desiccated economic orthodoxies—sometimes reasonably (he correctly pointed out that Greece will never repay all of its debts), sometimes outlandishly (covertly planning a parallel Greek payments system). He was ridiculed for a photo-shoot in Paris Match, a French celebrity magazine, which showed him dining stylishly on his roof-terrace beneath the Acropolis. To many critics, his career is one unending book tour: tomes excoriating the international economic establishment fly off the shelves every time he bashes elites in the media.
Mr Varoufakis’s European ambitions do not exactly disprove the stereotype. He is running in the impending Greek parliamentary election and in the European Parliament elections—for Germany. This is provocative in a country where Mr Varoufakis has long been demonised. “If we wanted to reform the Roman empire we would start in Rome, not in southern Egypt,” he argues. At the rally in Berlin he indulges in Utopianism, imagining the first press conference on the Monday morning of a European Spring-led Europe. The proposals to be announced on that glorious day: €2.5trn in green investments from the European Investment Bank (eib) over five years, a guarantee from the European Central Bank that it will prop up the prices of eib bonds in secondary markets and the mutualisation of (good) European debt to lower interest rates.
All of this sends orthodox eyeballs skywards. Yet one does not have to agree with everything the Greek politician says to find some aspects of his efforts welcome. European Spring, the electoral wing of a trans-European political movement called (rather irritatingly) diem25, wants to help Europeanise the European elections. The parliament in Strasbourg is a supra-national body passing supra-national European legislation, but elections to it are fought on national lines by national parties. Europe’s media, trade unions and civic organisations are mostly national. Few political figures are known across borders. In the words of Elly Schlein, a young Italian European Spring candidate: “The eu is a round table where politicians have their backs to each other, facing domestic political concerns instead.” In other words, most of the eu’s debates do not take place at the level where European power is exercised. European Spring thinks that needs to be corrected.
Moreover, it may breathe some life into the old, tribal European politics. Traditional party groups in the European Parliament are moribund. Only last week it was alleged that Elmar Brok, a walrus-like Christian Democrat from Germany, had been charging constituents to visit the parliament and made €18,000 a year from the wheeze. He denies the accusations. You do not have to agree with the European Spring’s proposals—which include a universal citizen’s income, totally open borders and relaxed fiscal policies—to welcome the possible arrival of new, fresh legislators like Ms Schlein in Strasbourg. “If you try to take over an existing political party, you will be taken over by it,” warns Mr Varoufakis. “They are bureaucratic machines wedded to the nation-state with an institutional aversion to ideas.”
European Spring is at best a fringe outfit. Even Mr Varoufakis reckons it is unlikely to win more than a handful of seats, and he is not known for understatement. So its effects on the debate in Strasbourg and Brussels are likely to be limited. But at a time when pro-Europeans seem ever more confined to the technocratic centre of politics, it is welcome to find a transnational party making the case for openness from a different perspective. Europe will only be open in the future if openness has defenders on the right, centre and left of politics. Many on the left—Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France, Sarah Wagenknecht in Germany—are turning towards leftist tribalism, Euroscepticism and anti-immigration politics in an attempt to win over disaffected voters. But European Spring embraces none of those things. Mr Varoufakis stresses that the group has liberal strains, and that he has long dealt with figures outside his own ideological camp (he is in close contact with Norman Lamont, a British Conservative former finance minister). European Spring activists talk about bringing together French and Polish workers to defuse national conflicts between the two, encouraging young European volunteers to help refugees in hostels near the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais and taking on the Italian government in cities like Naples.
Times are tough for Europe’s liberals. Their tunes no longer sound so good in a post-crisis age, and they are struggling to find new ones. They will undoubtedly disagree with much that Mr Varoufakis and his comrades say. But they are at least fellow fighters in an increasingly difficult struggle against the drift to a Europe of closed societies and economies.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Varoufakis Sans Frontières”
Print edition | Europe
Jan 31st 2019
For the site of The Economist, click here.
Andrew Neil Loses Badly to Owen Jones and Carole Cadwalladr on Fascist Content of the Spectator
More fun at the expense of the right press! About a fortnight ago, left-wing journo and activist Owen Jones appeared on Andrew Neil’s current affairs show, This Week, and seriously upset him by reminding him of the Spectator’s dodgy far-right content. Neil and his guests had been supposed to talk about whether the media was assisting the rise of the far right. Just to show that people in glass houses shouldn’t raise topics they may find embarrassing, Jones reminded the world that the Spectator, of whose board Brillo is the distinguished chairman, had published an article praising Greek neo-Nazis. This was the rag’s long-time columnist, Taki, which praised the Golden Dawn as just good, patriotic Greeks. Well, they are patriotic in the same sense as the Nazis, Mussolini’s Fascists and the BNP. They’re a violent neo-Nazi group notorious for violent attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers. If I remember correctly, one of their members was also accused of murder of an opposition politician or journalist. As for Taki himself, he’s a snobbish Greek multimillionaire playboy, who has spent time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in Pentonville for possessing cocaine. He’s also published articles in the Speccie which are anti-Semitic.
Brillo Pad tried to shut Jones up, talking over him and accusing him of persuing a personal vendetta against him. That sequence of his wretched programme ended with Brillo staring into the camera like an existentialist philosopher like Sartre or Camus contemplating the awful meaninglessness of the universe. It seems that the veteran newspaper editor was afraid Jones was trying to get him sacked, and the spat continued on Twitter. According to a piece put up on Zelo Street last Monday, Brillo was denying that the Spectator was a ‘facist’ magazine and repeated the claim that Jones was pursuing a personal vendetta. He was also upset because one of the magazine’s own columnists had compared him to Mussolini and another that he was a ‘Paisley Pleb’. Jones hit back, saying
“There is no personal vendetta. You are the licence payer funded BBC flagship politics interviewer, and the Chairman of a hard right magazine whose articles praise the Wehrmacht, claim black people have lower IQs than white people, and defend Greek neo-nazis. These are facts”.
Zelo Street, quoting Michael Walker on Twitter also said that Jones did not accuse the magazine of being Fascist, but of publishing and platforming Fascists. The website also added that Brillo has also published a piece from Rod Liddle, saying that there should be more islamophobia in the Tory party, and from Douglas Murray, who said that conditions should be made harder for Muslims right across the board. As for Brillo’s statement that instead of pursuing his personal vendetta on the Beeb, Jones should have first come to him with his complaint, Zelo Street pointed out that this would have been worthless, because of the way Brillo tried to shout him down.
http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/01/owen-jones-roasts-andrew-neil.html
Brillo was also roundly criticized by Observer journo Carole Cadwalladr, who rebutted Neil’s claim that he doesn’t interfere in the content of the Speccie. This is the journalist Neil had insulted as a ‘crazy cat woman’. After asking Neil on Twitter if he was sitting comfortably, she began with telling him that an ex-employee had said that
“The Spectator today is entirely made in Andrew Neil’s image. His constant presence in the building means that he looms over everything editorial … he shapes the agenda by his contempt for anyone and anything that challenges his right-wing, ultra-capitalist world-view. He wishes the Spectator was the Economist and that Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister. He has drained the magazine of gentleness and joy”. She also quoted another ex-Speccie journo, who said
‘The idea that Andrew is not responsible for content at the Spectator is…laughably false.’ … ‘The editors were frankly a little scared of Andrew.’
Zelo Street went on by reminding its readers that under Brillo Pad, the Sunday Times paid holocaust denier David Irving to write articles, as well as publishing pieces claiming that the HIV virus did not cause AIDS. It also lost Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower, who was jailed for revealing that Israel had developed nuclear weapons. The article continues by stating that Neil has got away with flagrant conflicts of interests with his position at the Beeb, including running the Addison Club, an elite dining society which may have been responsible for Russian money finding its way into the Leave campaign. He also used his position at the Beeb to promote his own denial of climate change. The article concluded with the statement that he got away with all that, but one more callous insult could be the last straw.
http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/01/brillo-faces-cadwalladrs-revenge.html
Last time I looked, Neil was still on the Beeb and I really doubt that the corporation wants to fire him. But Neil’s own history of publishing extreme right-wing and unscientific articles in his newspapers clearly shows that he really can’t claim to be an impartial host, and lay the broadcaster open to further criticism.
Andrew Neil Goes Gammon As Owen Jones Brings Up Spectator’s Support for Greek Fascists
Oh ho! This is hilarious, so kudos and respect to Owen Jones for reminding everyone just what disgusting opinions some of the Spectator’s contributors have. As well as seriously embarrassing the man Private Eye jocularly refers to as ‘Brillo Pad’. I found this video, posted on YouTube by Evolve Politics, of Jones’ appearance on one of Neil’s politics shows accusing him and his magazine, the Spectator, of supporting the Greek neo-Nazis Golden Dawn.
Jones was a guest on Neil’s show This Week, opposite Michael Portillo and a woman I’m afraid I don’t recognize. They had been discussing the recent chanting and insults hurled at Anna Soubry and Jones himself by James Goddard and his stormtroopers. Jones said that he and Soubry were both called ‘traitors’ by Goddard, just as the man, who murdered Jo Cox had called her. He also mentioned the way the press had also accused other individuals and public figures of being traitors and enemies of the people as well, insults and accusations which are then regurgitated by Far Right fanatics. At this point Neil starts getting uncomfortable and tries changing the subject, but Jones keeps talking, telling him that they’re nearly out of time, so he wants to ask another question. Neil states ‘I am many things, but I’m not naive’. To which Jones simply replies, ‘You are.’ Neil obvious knew what was going to come next, but that still didn’t stop it happening. Jones then continues ‘The Spectator is a classic example.’ At which point Neil replies that he knew this was coming and wasn’t going to let Jones hijack his programme. He said that Jones’ lies and smears about him were not going to be dealt with that evening, and told him to move off it.
But Jones continued, despite Brill Pad changing the subject. Why was it, mused the former editor of the Sunday Times and the Economist, that when the Far Right behaves appallingly, it’s thuggery, but when the Left does it, it’s activism? Undeterred, Jones carries on stating that he would continue with what he was saying, and talked about how the Spectator had defended Greek neo-Nazis. Neil, having tried to talk over him and get him to shut up, then automatically denied that the Speccie had done any such thing. He then starts saying that the editor was responsible, before Jones asked him if he was the chairman of the Spectator. ‘I’m not responsible for content’, said Brillo. Jones then remarked that there was enough islamophobia in the Tory party, just as there was in the Spectator and other newspapers. At which point Brillo cries ‘Enough!’ Jones then begins to answer the question on left-wing activism, saying that he will answer it. ‘No, you won’t!’ declares Neil, ‘You’ve run out of time.’ If this is intended to stop Jones, it fails miserably, as he prompts goes back to talking about the Spectator and its support for the Greek neo-Nazis. The Spectator has incited support for neo-Nazis, and racism against Muslims and immigrants. Brillo tries to regain control of the situation by declaring that it’s an subject for another time, but another forum. ‘Tonight is not the night’, Brillo stated, ‘for your lies and smears against me’. He then ends by thanking Jones for appearing on his show. The clip ends with Brillo staring into the camera with the haunted look of the man staring at the train coming down the tracks at him.
It’s clear from this that there is some kind personal feud between Jones and Brillo. Not that this should be any surprise. Brillo seems to have offended many people wish his various utterances on Twitter. But Neil was himself wrong when he said that the Spectator did not support neo-Nazis. It may not now, but five years ago in 2013 it caused massive outrage when it published a piece by Greek playboy and convicted coke fiend, Taki, defending the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn are genuine neo-Nazi thugs, responsible for attacks on immigrants, particularly Muslims, and left-wingers. Their flag is one of the angular ancient Greek geometrical designs, which isn’t too far from the swastika. Their ideal of ancient Greek civilization isn’t the sublime culture of Athens, but Sparta, the militarized Greek society in which the soldier citizens ruled over the Helots, the conquered slaves, and where deformed and sickly babies were examined and murdered in a chilling system that prefigured the Nazis and their eugenic murder of the disabled.
Taki had written in his article that the Golden Dawn were not Nazis, but were simply ‘rough boys’ who were good, patriotic Greeks. They were saving their people from the political correctness which had left many Greeks living on less than what was given to illegal African immigrants, and were similarly protecting ordinary Greeks from Albanian criminals, and supporting poorer Greeks who had suffered from disastrous bank withdrawals.
Taki’s comments caused massive outrage. The Huffington Post ran a piece about his article, pointing out that the group uses racist and anti-Semitic language, and that their leader had admitted that they’d adopted the Nazi salute, as well as the fact that one of them had slapped a female Greek politico live on TV. The magazine carried photographs of the squadristi in their black shirts holding a torchlight procession and waving Greek flags.
The Liberal Conspiracy site in their piece went further, and quoted the convicted felon, who compared the Golden Dawn to other left-wing activists, claiming that their behaviour would have been completely acceptable if it came from the left.
But if they were lefties and railed against capitalism they would be treated like heroes, the way Bono, Bianca Jagger and other such untalented rappers and phonies are. Golden Dawn members might need some lessons in social etiquette, but what the bien pensant need much more is to get off the pot and their double standards. Golden Dawn members are mostly labourers, martial artists, cops, security personnel and good old-fashioned patriotic Greeks.
Which is what Neil was trying to say in his last question to Jones.
What astonished the Liberal Conspiracy author was the fact that the Speccie’s editor, Fraser Nelson, appeared to believe that the piece was absolutely acceptable, saying that it did not have a party line and published well-written pieces that their members enjoyed while disagreeing with.
Hardly. The Spectator is a high Tory magazine, and so very definitely has a party line. And Taki has plenty of previous when it comes to anti-Semitism, as reported and commented on many times by Private Eye.
I dare say Neil wasn’t responsible for Taki’s vile piece being published by the magazine. But it is true that he did support the Golden Dawn, and that this has rightly tarnished the magazine’s reputation. And the media must share some responsibility for the rise of Fascism by promoting the fears that Fascists exploit – about immigration, Islam, ethnic minorities and violent crime. And they have vilified perfectly decent people as traitors. When a group judge ruled in favour of moving the Brexit issue to parliament, the Mail put them on the front page and hysterically denounced them as ‘enemies of the people’. Just like the Nazis attacked the opponents of their regime.
The Conservative media have therefore aided the rise of the Far Right, and the Spectator did publish an article supporting Greek Nazis. And despite Neil’s protests, Jones was right to tackle him on it.
John Quiggin on the Absolute Failure of Trickle-Down Economics
John Quiggin is an economics professor at the university of Queensland Down Under. His 2010 book, Zombie Economics, is a very thorough demolition of the economic theories that have formed the current dogma since the election of Thatcher and Reagan in 1979 and 1980.
One of the theories he refutes is ‘trickle-down’ economics. This is theory that if you act to give more wealth to the rich through tax cuts, deregulation and privatization, this wealth will trickle down to benefit those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. It was one of the central planks of Thatcherism. And even in the 1980s, it’s effectiveness was highly dubious. I remember watching a documentary about it on the Beeb, which illustrated the theory with a pyramid of champagne glasses. When the glasses at the top of the pyramid were filled to overflowing, the champagne flowed down to the glasses lower down. So, Thatcher and her cronies claimed, their programme of free market economics would benefit everyone in society by enriching those at the top, from whom it would trickle down to the rest of us. If I remember correctly, the programme itself argued this wasn’t happening. And it hasn’t since. on pages 155 to 157 Quggin shows how the policy has not worked in America, and in fact the poor are massively poorer off. He writes
The experience of the United States during the decades of market liberalism, from the 1970s until the Global Financial Crisis, gives little support for the trickle-down view. The gross domestic product of the United States grew solidly in this period, if not as rapidly as during the Keynesian postwar boom. More relevantly to the trickle-down hypothesis , the incomes and wealth of the richest Americans grew spectacularly. Incomes at the fifth percentile of the income distribution doubled and those for the top 0.1 per cent quadrupled.
By contrast, the gains to households in the middle of the income distribution have been much more modest. As shown in figure 4.2, real median household income rose from forty-five thousand dollars to just over fifty thousand dollars between 1973 (the last year of the long postwar expansion) and 2008. The annual rate of increase was 0.4 per cent.
For those at the bottom of the income distribution, there have been no gains at all. Real incomes for the lower half of the distribution have stagnated. The same picture emerges if we look at wages. Median real earning for full-time year-round male workers have not grown since 1974. For males with high school education or less, real wages have actually declined. According to estimates made by the Economic Policy Institute, the average annual earnings of twenty-five to twenty-nine-year-old high school graduates, expressed in 2005 values, fell from #30,900 in 1970 to $25,90 in 2000, and have stagnated since then.
Since 2000, median household incomes have actually fallen, the first time in modern history that such a decline has taken place over a full business cycle. One result can be seen by looking at the proportion of households living below the poverty line. The poverty rate declined steadily during the postwar Keynsian era. It has remained essentially static since 1970, falling in booms, but rising again in recessions.
Unlike most developed countries, the United States has a poverty line fixed in terms of absolute consumption levels and based on an assessment of a poverty-line food budget undertaken in 1963. The proportion of Americans below this fixed poverty line fell from 25 per cent in the late 1950s to 11 percent in 1974. Since then it has fluctuated, reaching 13.2 percent in 2008, a level that is certain to rise further as a result of the financial crisis and recession now taking place. Since the poverty line has remained unchanged, this means that the real incomes accruing to the poorest ten percent of Americans have fallen over the last thirty years.
These outcomes are reflected in measures of the numbers of Americans who lack access to the basics of life: food, shelter, and adequate medical care.
In 2008, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics quoted by the Food Research Action Center, 49.1 million Americans live in households classified as “food insecure”, meaning that they lacked access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to lack of financial resources. Slightly more than 17 million people (17.3 million) lived in households that were considered to have “very low food security”, which means that one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. This number had doubled since 2000 and has almost certainly increased further as a result of the recession.
The number of people without health insurance rose steadily over the period of market liberalism, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population, reaching a peak of 46 million, or 15 percent of the population. Among the insured, an increasing proportion was reliant on government programs. The traditional model of employment-based private health insurance, which was developed as part of the New Deal, and covered most of the population during the Keynesian era, was eroded to the point of collapse.
Homelessness is almost entirely a phenomenon of the era of market liberalism. During the decade of full employment, homelessness was confined to a tiny population of transients, mostly older males with mental health and substance abuse problems. By contrast, in 2007, 1.6 million people spent time in homeless shelters, and about 40 percent of the homeless population were families with children.
The experience of the United States in the era of market liberalism was as thorough a refutation of the trickle-down hypothesis as can reasonably be imagined. The well off have become better off, and the rich have become super-rich. Despite impressive technological progress, those in the middle of the income distributions struggled to stay in place, and those at the bottom became worse-off in crucial respects.
(My emphasis).
Bernie Sanders in his book described just how severe the crisis in private American medical care was. It almost collapsed completely in certain states because a very large number of patients are simply unable to afford medical treatment.
And the same situation prevails here in Britain, with increasing poverty here in Britain. Millions of households now live below the poverty line, a quarter of million people need food banks to keep body and soul together, including working people with families. As Mike pointed out in a piece last week, parents are now starving themselves in order to fee their children.
The NHS is also in crisis, though for different but related reasons to those in the US. It’s in crisis because of massive funding cuts by the Tories over the last decade, and the determination of both Tory and New Labour administrations to privatise it by stealth. The introduction of private enterprise into the NHS actually raises costs, not diminishes them. It’s for the simple reason that private firms have to make a profit to pass on to their shareholders. Plus private firms also have bureaucracies of their own, which in some instances can take up 44 per cent of the firm’s income.
And added to this there is a massive increase in homelessness. But don’t worry! Yesterday, the I newspaper published a piece from the Economist telling millennials to cheer up, because in the future they’ll be able to afford their own home. Which sounds very much like simple propaganda for the current economic orthodoxy, rather than a realistic, credible prediction.
Free market capitalism has failed, despite what the press and media is trying to tell us. The Conservatives responsible for its adoption should be thrown out of government, and the Blairites who introduced it into Labour should be forced out of the positions of power they seek to monopolise. If not expelled altogether as Thatcherite entryists.
We need a genuine, socialist Labour government to clean this mess up. A government which must be led by Jeremy Corbyn.
‘I’ Newspaper Publishing Economist Articles to Promote Economic Orthodoxy?
The I proudly announced yesterday, 5th January 1919, that it had now made an agreement with the Economist to print articles from that magazine. Now the Economist has a reputation for excellent journalism, and for clearly explaining complex issues for a lay readership. But it is, unsurprisingly as a business magazine, firmly behind the current economic orthodoxy. Which is that capitalism is great, and state intervention and the unions are to be strongly resisted.
The I started out as a digest version of the Independent, which adopted its name in order to show that it was independent of party political bias. The I undercut its parent paper, which has now, I believe, gone on the internet. As for the I itself, while it is supposedly free of overall political bias, it has shown itself to be consistently and fiercely biased against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party. If followed the rest of the press, for example, in promoting the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour leader and his supporters.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that capitalism in the west is now in serious trouble. In Britain a quarter of a million people now have to rely on food banks to fend off starvation, a sizable proportion of whom are actually working. Tens of thousands of people are homeless, and the present generation of young people in Britain and America are now looking at a future in which they will never be able to afford to buy their own home. Even rented property may be out of their reach. Recent polls show that 55 per cent of American young people now have no faith in capitalism.
And in Britain this is all set to get worse, much worse, with Brexit. Which is why Tweezer has set up a department to deal with food shortages, and has prepared to put 3,500 squaddies on Britain’s streets in the event that Britain crashes out without a deal with the EU.
This must worry the ruling elite, which worked hard throughout the Cold War to stop the peoples of the world taking up Communism and has consistently attacked, destabilized and overthrown liberal and left-wing governments and political leaders around the world. This has not prevented the business papers in the past recognizing that there were profound problems with current economic policy. In the 1990s, for example, the Financial Times carried a number of articles demonstrating very clearly that poverty was increasing, and that the majority of the new poor in America and elsewhere were actually working, not unemployed. This was when the newspaper supported the Lib Dems, though that didn’t stop one of its columnists telling his readers that he supported workfare. According to Private Eye the FT is, like the rest of the lamestream press, losing readers. It has tried to reverse this by switching its support to the Tories, but this hasn’t stopped its readers from leaving it.
Looking at this arrangement between the I and the Economist, it seems that these journals are also in trouble. The I‘s management seems to hope that this arrangement will encourage some of the Economist’s readers will also start reading the paper, while it can be inferred that the Economist’s management probably hope that some the I’s will start looking at theirs.
Now this doesn’t mean that the I will start having a strong political bias towards one party, although it has always attacked Corbyn and his supporters in Labour. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t have a political bias at all. It does. Like the Groaniad, it is biased towards the current worn-out Thatcherite political and economic consensus. Hence both magazines’ attacks on Corbyn because he and his supporters have rejected it and are determined to overturn it.
It seems to me very strongly that the I has therefore made this arrangement with the Economist, not just to boost sales, but also to try to reinforce and promote the popular acceptance of Thatcherite economic orthodoxy, an orthodoxy that is accepted uncritically by the Blairites and the Lib Dems outside the Conservative party, but which is rejected by the Corbynites. An economic orthodoxy that is increasingly shown to be wrong, and catastrophically wrong, to an increasingly large number of this country’s citizens.
The I and its owners, like the press, are terrified of this, as is the rest of the press. Hence the decision to try and bolster Thatcherite capitalism through the republication of Economist articles, even when claiming still to be politically independent. But it’s only independent of particular parties. Ideologically, it’s still Thatcherite.
May Runs Away from Debating Corbyn as ITV Withdraws Offer to Host It
Once again it appears that Tweezer has run away from a debate with Jeremy Corbyn. At the 2017 election last year, she challenged the Labour leader to a debate, then sent Amber Rudd instead when Corbyn took her up on it. Now it appears that she’s legged it away from debating Corbyn once again after ITV withdrew their offer to host the debate between the two.
May wanted the debate to be hosted by the Beeb, which wanted to include a panel of people with different opinions on Brexit and have an opening and closing statement. Labour saw too much opportunity for the Beeb to bias this against Corbyn, and refused to agree to it. Quite right. It seems that the Tories had been negotiation with the Beeb for a couple of weeks before Tweezer issued her challenge. The Maybot’s spin doctor, Robbie, is an ex-Beeb journo, as have been so many of the staff of the Tories’ PR department. The Beeb’s own reporting has always been heavily biased against Corbyn, which again is no surprise considering the number of Tories amongst the Beeb’s newsroom staff. Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson were former chairs of the Confederation of Conservative Students and the Young Tories. Neil edited The Economist and the Sunday Times, both right-wing rags. Sarah Sands, another Beeb journo, used to edit the Torygraph.
Labour preferred ITV’s format, which was simply for a plain, head-to-head debate between the two party leaders. Two days ago, the Beeb withdrew its offer to host the debate, leaving only ITV. Which yesterday also withdrew its offer, saying it was up to the two party leaders to comes to an agreement about the debate. A Labour spokesman then issued a comment stating that the commercial channel had withdrawn their offer because Tweezer was running scared. He explained why Corbyn and Labour had preferred the ITV format, and concluded
The Prime Minister has refused to join Jeremy in a head-to-head debate. Her team tried to confuse people with a convoluted format. But the British public will see this for what it is – Theresa May unable to face real scrutiny over her crumbling deal.
Absolutely. May can’t deal with any kind of debate or real interaction with a genuinely skeptical or inquiring British public. When she went to meet supposedly ordinary people during the election campaign last year, her audiences were always very carefully selected, and were composed of Tory activists and others the Tories considered reliable. Everything was minutely stage-managed. And it’s clear that May and her handlers clearly believe that she has absolutely no chance in an unbiased, straightforward forum.
And so, once again, she’s put her tail between her legs and run as far and as fast as she could!
So much for ‘strong and stable’.
Mike put up a piece about it yesterday, including comments from the Twitterati, who were quick to call May out on this. Devutopia in their tweet said ‘We have a scared coward running the country. She needs to be kicked out of No.10.’ While Chunky Mark, the Artist Taxi Driver, said in his, ‘The Prime Minister couldn’t even negotiate a TV debate let alone Brexit!!! Put that in your fckn headline’. So Mike did in his article about it.
And May hasn’t been able to negotiate a good Brexit deal for Britain. Despite her hyping herself as a ‘bloody awkward woman’ who would get one for Britain, the opposite was true. According to EU officials, she was reduced to running around pleading with them to give her something, and refused to accept that they didn’t have to give her anything.
May can’t debate Corbyn, and she couldn’t debate Brexit. But it’s the British people that are suffering.
May’s Brexit deal looks like comprehensively wrecking our economy, as well as contributing to the further fragmentation of the United Kingdom. All because Cameron believed he could win the referendum against the ‘Leave’ faction in the Tories.
Get Tweezer out now, and put a proper Labour government in power, one that will look after Britain and its people, and get a proper Brexit deal.
More Problems for Tweezer and Biased Beeb as Corporation Withdraws Offer to Host Debate
Last week Mike also put up a series of articles discussing the Beeb’s proposal to host the debate over Brexit between Corbyn and Tweezer, and showed why Corbyn should choose ITV instead. It seems the Corporation had been in negotiations with May to host the debate through Robbie, one of Tweezer’s spin doctors, who used to work at the Corporation. This had been done weeks before May issued her challenge to Corbyn, which suggested that Tweezer was hoping for some help from the ever biased BBC.
The Beeb didn’t just want a straightforward, head-to-head debate between the two party leaders. They also wanted this to be
followed by a discussion between eight panellists, including politicians, with a wide range of views on Brexit, and ending with further head-to-head debate and closing statements.
This was in contrast to ITV’s offer, which was just for a straight head-to-head debate between May and Corbyn. As Mike points out on his blog, the Beeb had no right to change the format of the debate, and suggested that their doing so may have been part of their negotiations with Tweezer. The inclusion of a panel, with members that included other politicians, also gave the Corporation too much freedom to pack the show with pro-Tory viewpoints. Like the Corporation has been doing every Thursday evening on Question Time, and on just about every news programme. If they can get in an attack against Corbyn, they will.
On Tuesday Mike put up a piece reporting that the Beeb had withdrawn their offer, and published their official reply. Which he also critiqued. Apart from the above comments about possible bias in the format, and its origins with Tweezer, Mike also commented that the Beeb’s disappointment at being unable to bring the British people this programme and its wide variety of views, shows why the Corporation still deserves its nickname of ‘Auntie’. It’s still trying to tell the British public what to think.
The Corporation did, however, say that it would have a Brexit edition of the One Show, which was apparently broadcast yesterday, and would show a programme completely devoted to Brexit on Monday, 10th December.
Mike concluded his article on this by saying that the Beeb’s withdrawal puts May into a quandary. He writes
It seems clear she has been trying to manoeuvre Mr Corbyn into a position where she can accuse him – of not understanding her Brexit plan; of trying to sabotage Brexit; or even of running away from a TV debate.
But now, with her BBC set-up scotched and all the smart money saying she won’t agree to the ITV plan, it seems that – once again – Mrs May will be the one accused of “running away”.
In fact, the Labour Party has done that already.
In fact many people said on Twitter that Corbyn would be far better off going to ITV, Channel 4 or Sky for the debate, rather than the Beeb. Because the Beeb simply can’t be trusted. Lord Adonis, one of Blair’s former cabinet ministers said it. And Tom Pride gave four good reasons in one of his tweets. These were about Andrew Neil, the host of the Daily Politics, Nick ‘Macclesfield Goebbels’ Robinson, Sarah Sands, a Beeb politics editor, and Lynn Hayter, the fake vicar.
Neil before he joined the Beeb was a former chair of the Confederation of Conservative Students, Robinson was also a chair of the Young Tories, Sands was a former editor at the Mail and Torygraph, while Hayter is an actor the Beeb dragged on claiming she was a proper, accredited member of the clergy. Instead of a self-appointed pastor of an internet church flogging the Prosperity Gospel heresy.
He also commented on how May threw a strop at the Philip Schofield for asking her an awkward question over on ITV’s This Morning. Schofield’s a good professional interviewer, but This Morning is very definitely not the Spanish Inquisition. Which May definitely didn’t expect, and couldn’t handle the torment of the comfy chair (gratuitous Monty Python reference). So Mike went on to argue that, from past evidence of May running away from a debate with Corbyn at the last election, if anyone’s going to do a runner, it’s her.
As for the Neil and Robinson, they’re only two of a newsroom packed with Tories. Mike and the other left-wing bloggers have discussed many other Tory spin doctors, who used to work at the Corporation before deciding that even trying to put up a pretence of being impartial was too much for them, and went off to join Cameron and Tweezer. Neil was also the editor of the Neoliberal The Economist, and then the Sunday Times, where, according to Lobster, he ran fake stories and disinformation for MI5. And Robinson showed how massively biased he was in his editing of an exchange between him and former SNP leader Alex Salmond during the Scots Referendum debate the other year. Goebbels Nick asked Salmond whether he was afraid that the big financial houses in Edinburgh would flee south if the Scots gained independence. Salmond gave him a full answer, denying that this would happen. Confronted by awkward facts, Robinson and his team went off and edited the exchange. First of all they made it appear as if Salmond hadn’t really answered the question, then they removed his response completely and claimed that he ignored the question.
It was one of the most blatant falsification of news that I’ve seen.
And the Beeb has a long history of this, which they’re desperately trying to deny. They’ve launched a campaign against ‘fake news’, which is risible, considering they and the lamestream media are responsible for a fair number of fake and spurious news stories. And in next week’s Radio Times, there’s a feature praising Question Time to the roof, complete with a piccie of Dimblebore with a quizzical smile on his mug.
But older readers remember how the Beeb faked footage of the police attacking the miners at the Orgreave colliery during the 1980s miners’ strike, to make it look like the miners were attacking the rozzers. And too many people have now woken up to how Question Time is consistently biased against the Left. Quite apart from the systemic bias against Corbyn on nearly every Beeb news show.
The Beeb’s withdrawal of their offer to host the Brexit debate seems to confirm just how deeply the British public are suspicious about the Beeb and its Tory bias. They don’t trust it, and will continue turning away from it until it does something to correct its bias. But this may be far too much for a state broadcaster, that automatically follows the Tory, establishment line.