Maybe Steptoe needs to consider the fact that Cameron seems like a weight's been lifted from his shoulders since announcing his resignation:
It seems way past time for the Labour Party to split once and for all - hate-filled Trotsyist nutters to the left, creepy Blairite virtue-signallers to the right, with Andy Burnham forming his own party for the spinally challenged somewhere in the middle: the current situation is utterly farcical. Who was the architect of the new £3 membership rule that paved the way for this unholy mess? Step forward and take a bow, Ed Miliband: if you hadn't bequeathed us Corbyn, Leave might very well have lost. Thank you.
Meanwhile, I notice that - following an attempt to at least give an impression of impartiality during the referendum campaign - the BBC has reverted to type, and is now doing everything in its power to turn some inevitable short-term economic turbulence into a fully-fledged long-term disaster. Just to repeat myself: the dealers and traders who buy and sell currencies and stocks and shares and whatnot are, on the whole, a bunch of terrified, shrieking ladyboys, who herd together and stampede in the same direction whenever there's a hint of uncertainty - then, when a few of the braver members of their breed decide it's time to change course, immediately all race in the opposite direction. Obviously our state broadcaster has a duty to report these events, but it also has a duty not to eagerly fan the flames of public panic, or to use them for the purposes of anti-Brexit propaganda. The markets go up and they go down down. We know this. Try to reflect that in your reporting, and stop being so damned irresponsible.
I was watching BBC coverage yesterday when that abysmal excuse for a human being, Alastair Campbell, was wheeled on. He was given an inordinate amount of air time to voice his considered opinion that Boris Johnson was "finished". Yes, that's just what I was thinking - the Tory politician who twice won mayoral elections in a solid Labour city and who a few days ago won a stunning national referendum victory, despite the other side having the whole weight of the British and European political and economic establishments behind it (not to mention the President of the United States, David Beckham and Benedict Cumberbatch) is evidently all washed up. Given such a dreadful record of electoral failure, you'd have to be mad to imagine that Boris had any sort of political future.
Why Campbell was pushing this silly line is obvious: despite all his glaringly obvious faults, Boris Johnson has demonstrated on three separate momentous occasions his ability to transcend party politics by appealing to traditional Labour and Tory voters - Campbell knows that he would be toxic for Labour. The real question to ask is why the BBC allowed Campbell to spout this arrant nonsense unchallenged. And if I see the European Project's very own Gollum - i.e. the permanently besweatered Michael Heseltine - spouting alarmist anti-British nonsense from a comfy chair in the study of his no doubt immensely agweeable home - I will be... disappointed? This rather pathetic, obsessed old man has been demonstrably wrong about everything for decades, and I see no excuse for the BBC to keep foisting him on licence-payers.
Heseltine is the one type of Tory the BBC likes. He helped knife St Margaret, loves the EU - what's not to like? Ditto the equally repellent Ken Clarke, who is another permanent fixture on our screens.
ReplyDeleteThe Campbell thing, I don't quite get. He was poisonous to the BBC when he was Blair's hitman, so why haven't the comrades sought revenge by treating him to the media starvation he so richly deserves?
Meanwhile, the BBC's attempt to overturn our blessed independence had reached such a pitch by Sunday that I haven't listened to a 'news' broadcast all day.
I'm assuming there hasn't been any modulation.
"The Campbell thing" is simple - he was one of the chief architects of Blairism, and he helped keep the Tories out of power for 13 years. He could launch a missile attack on the BBC - and they'd still love him.
DeleteNo, the Beeb is still truffle-hunting for anti-democrats to soothe their fears that Brexit might actually happen just because a majority of voters supported it. They've gone a bit quiet on the stock market and the pound today, what with them recovering a bit - but they'll be bellowing the news at us should they start to slip again: Owen Paterson tore into the BBC's coverage of the markets on the Daily Politics today - and Rod Liddle was typically restrained about the hysterical, snobby anti-Brexit tone of their news coverage in the Spectator. I also enjoyed Tory commentator Alex Deane calling the BBC to account on the News Channel's Dateline London on Sunday - he's a new one on me, but very articulate and effective.