Sunday 17 May 2015

Well, that’s Labour taken care of for a few years – now let’s stop the BBC becoming the main opposition party

I’ve for so long dreaded the thought of a party consisting of cultural Marxists fronted by a special needs Prime Minister at the beck and call of malignant trade union thugs and a sharp-faced wee fusspot from north of the border taking control of the country that I can’t quite accept the fact that the threat has utterly evaporated. Even though I never quite discounted the possibility of a government from the right of the political spectrum again achieving an overall majority in the UK, I can’t really believe that the Tories have actually managed it. Just as I can’t believe that Michael Gove has been let loose on prisons and coming up with a Bill of Rights. Or – and this probably the most significant appointment Cameron has made – that John Whittingdale has been given the task of sorting out the BBC. Because the main thing this Tory government has to do between now and 2020 is to defang the nation's stridently left-wing Auntie.

Identifying the BBC as the government's main problem might sound a bit nutty, given the following: we’ve got an EU referendum to get through; despite encouraging headline economic stats, we’re still up to our necks in a grotesque amount of debt; the government is still spending more than it rips off us in tax; immigration is still completely out of control; and the Scots appear to have taken leave of their senses (apart from booting out Labour, of course  - that made perfect sense). But, purely from a political point of view, curbing the BBC tops the "to do" list. Why? Because, with Labour in disarray and the Lib-Dems destroyed and the SNP simply too small to stymie the Tories, the BBC has already done what it always does when the electorate resoundingly rejects Labour, and become the de facto official opposition to a majority Tory government.

The signs are already there. News reports treat the SNP with excited affection: everything Nicola Sturgeon says is suddenly fantastically important and should have Cameron quaking in his boots – even though the SNP received fewer votes at this election than the “Yes” campaign managed last year, and despite the fact that it can’t vote down the government; each fresh Labour leadership hopeful is treated as a massively talented and unifying figure and given powder-puff treatment by interviewers who would be tearing Tory candidates in a similar situation to shreds. As soon as this new Tory administration gets into its stride, the Today Programme will be ripping into hapless ministers with gusto, Newsnight will be predicting disaster at every turn, Have I Got News for You and The News Quiz will be sneering and jeering fit to bust. Meanwhile, the BBC be doing its best to destroy UKIP (which is doing a brilliant job of destroying itself) to ensure that it can’t consolidate its strong showing in Labour’s northern heartlands. Television and radio will be even more awash than they already are with victims of fascistic Tory “cuts” and vicious anti-union legislation. As for Europe, the government will constantly be shown as being increasingly “sidelined” by the EU and stuck on the wrong side of history. Contemporary BBC drama will be dripping with anti-Tory rhetoric and attitudes. Tory Britain will be characterised as a cruel, unfair, mean-spirited, racist hell-hole with millions of capitalism’s victims dependent on food banks to stave off malnutrition.

So, nothing new there, then.

Only, the corporation’s bias during the election campaign was so farcically naked and rabid that it may just be that the Tories have realised that – yes – something must finally be done! If the Tories blink now and fail to give Whittingdale all the support he needs to ensure that the BBC cleans out its Augean stables, a once-in-a-political-generation opportunity will be lost and my old employers will continue to use money provided by over half of the electorate – the half that voted for right-wing parties – to undermine the government we elected and to support policies we comprehensively rejected. The dripping wet soft left of the Tory Party must not be allowed to break rank and give simpering support to the BBC at any time during the next two years, when the corporation will be doing its damndest to make sure that everything the government does is presented in the worst possible light. I’m convinced that without the BBC constantly dripping socialistic poison into the ear of the electorate for the past five years, the Tory majority would have been far larger. Now that they’re no longer saddled with the treacherous Lib-Dems, there is no excuse for the Tories not to act – and to act decisively.

It could start by asking why Jo Brand – a vocal Labour Party supporter – was allowed to host Have I Got News for You on the day following the election. And why she was allowed to utter the line “The Tories got wiped out in Scotland. Again!” Was that really representative of what happened in Scotand, when the Tories actually managed to hold on to their single seat? I’m pretty sure it was another party that got wiped out in Scotland ten days ago. Could the HIGNFY team not have rewritten the script – or was it just that they were so shell-shocked that they couldn’t face doing so?

English voters didn’t just reject the Labour Party ten days’ ago – they rejected the BBC’s anti-Tory and anti-UKIP rhetoric. Just as Labour urgently needs to understand why its offering didn’t resonate with the electorate, the BBC needs to understand that the majority of license-fee payers rejected its pro-EU, pro-immigration, anti-“austerity” views – and must figure out how to get back in step with the majority of the people who fund it, rather than continue pandering to Guardian readers. After all, The Guardian has a circulation of 185,000 – the BBC reaches 46 million Britons every week: it’s time the BBC stopped serving the population of Islington and started trying to serve the majority of Britons.

Taking a flame-thrower to Newsnight and the Today Programme might be a start. A series of chats with its political “journalists” would also be a good idea – starting with John Pienaar, Allegra Stratton and Norman Smith, none of whom have exactly covered themselves in glory in recent weeks. Cancelling or comprehensively “refreshing” the list of performers on Have I Got News for You, The News Quiz, and every other pseudo-comedy panel show would be a good idea. And, of course, Radio 5 Live should be told to mend its hard-left ways or face closure. After News and Comedy have been sorted, they should move on to Drama, which appears to be another communist cell. And, in future, when hiring staff for any of these departments, they might think of asking candidates whether the thing about Britain they’re most proud of is the NHS – and, if they answer in yes, bring the interview to an abrupt halt.

This really is the Right's one chance of bringing BBC dementors to heel. Please don't cock it up.

2 comments:

  1. You are, of course, absolutely right.

    Like you, I also think 'now is the time' - possibly it's even the last chance - but where would the replacements come from?

    The way the university system has become (even more) a wholly owned subsidiary of the radical Left in the past few decades means that almost all humanities graduates are pre-programmed to follow the cultural Marxist line. So where do you get your journalists from? Ditto, the writers, comedians, presenters and all the others that would be needed to ensure a balance? Past precedent tells us that it simply won't work to slap a few wrists and tell them to behave themselves.. Behaving themselves is something Leftists cannot do. As Janet Daley reminded us in the Telegraph today, this is a religion we are dealing with and like all zealots, Leftists are incapable of keeping it to themselves.

    The Left pulled off silent coup when it took over the universities and unless we change the way the media recruits, so that we source employees from a wider gene pool, it's hard to see how the next Jo Brand and Norman Sergeant won't be exactly the same as the last.

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  2. Couldn't agree more. It's going to be a long, painful process, but I think the fightback has already begun. Social media has proved that there are an awful lot of conservatives and right-wingers out there, just as opposed to socialism as you and I evidently are - I'm pretty sure the Tories and UKIP wouldn't have done nearly so well if it hadn't been for endless websites, blogs, Twitter and comments on MSM echoing non-leftist voters' views, thus proving that there's nothing wrong with rejecting the great BBC/Guadrian/Labour left-wing narrative. As for students, there are heartening signs that they're starting to ignore their lecturers by rejecting the idea of cradle-to-grave welfarism and Big Government - economic Thatcherism evidently makes sense to them (well, all but the 20% who are constitutionally leftist). This may, of course, be the result of having to pay £9,000 a year tutition fees, which must concentrate the mind wonderfully. I also hear that Russell Brand and Owen Jones are turning into figures of fun amongst young folk. There's hope!

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