A weekend update on some recent key Brexit-relevant story headlines, choosing four which, while not necessarily meriting a full-length article, nevertheless warrant a paragraph or two of comment, rather than merely a couple of lines. (NB: (£) denotes article behind paywall.)
Few are better qualified than Professor Tombs to expound on the historically different approaches to philosophy and law which govern the respective attitudes of the French and English towards the negotiating of treaties. The former view the opening text as sacred, to be departed from only minimally, if at all: for the latter, it is merely a starting point from which give-and-take bartering can proceed towards, eventually, a mutually acceptable outcome.
Personally, I find it a curious paradox how, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of trade negotiations, it’s the British who are pragmatic and transactional, while the Brussels Eurocrats are institutional and inflexible: but that, when it comes to the philosophical question of EU membership per se, it’s the Eurocrats who are transactional, emphasising alleged economic advantage, while the British are constitutional, prioritising the principles of sovereignty, democracy and self-government over the risk of temporary economic disruption.
Anyway, to the schism identified by Professor Tombs must be added current domestic politics among the main EU protagonists. In Germany, Merkel’s originally anointed successor as CDU party leader and Chancellor having withdrawn, the contest has now degenerated into an unedifying struggle between two fairly unimpressive male apparatchiks. In France, an already unpopular Macron faces municipal elections in late March from which he is likely to emerge weakened.
The two diametrically different approaches, coupled with more volatile both French and German domestic politics, could well turn the Brexit trade-talks into a dialogue of the deaf. In which case, the likelihood of Britain deciding that further negotiation is pointless, and walking away to WTO terms, will become even greater.
This is about the EU’s restrictions on the power of member-states’ national legislatures on state-aid and competition. Yet despite the insistence by Barnier on ‘red lines’ for a ‘level playing field’ regarding his demand for continuing UK-EU ‘regulatory alignment’ after Brexit, the EU is, as ever, the greatest breaker of the rules it purports to impose on others.
Germany, France, Belgium and Italy all receive favourable state-aid dispensations at between three and four times the rate Britain does. Some ‘level playing field’. . . . Moreover, identifying where responsibility lies for administering the rules is typically shrouded in bureaucratic obfuscation. It would be futile focusing on this area to the detriment of others in negotiation.
Once again, it’s possible to envisage this issue causing Labour some trouble domestically, especially if the party, though nominally united, has ongoing tensions between the soft-Left faction of presumed winner Starmer and the defeated hard-Left camp grouped around Long-Bailey. Remember, Corbyn repeatedly appeared torn between his desire as a Remainer to stay within the EU’s ambit and his desire as a socialist to use taxpayers’ money to prop up failing businesses.
Briefly, for those unable to breach the paywall, the article references the spat between Britain and the EU on the former’s accusation that the EU resiled from its offer of a Canada-style Free Trade Agreement, and the latter’s accusation that Britain is resiling from a previous agreement not to re-open aspects of Theresa May’s Political declaration. It goes on to regret the end result of the document supposed to guide the negotiations being at the centre of a feud.
It’s hard not to see a combination of naïveté and anti-Brexit EU-philia at work here. These negotiations were always going to be conducted in an atmosphere of bad faith on the EU’s side. The reason isn’t hard to discern. Going back to Professor Tombs’ article, for Britain, these negotiations are transactional: for the EU, on the other hand, they are near-existential.
As the Bruges Group remarked this week. . .
The UK does not demand special treatment from the EU.
We merely expect the EU to treat us like any other country.
Indeed. But that’s also slightly to miss the point. The EU is conceptually incapable of treating us like any other country. Alone among other countries who joined it, we have chosen to repudiate and quit their to them noble but to us neo-imperial Project. For that, in their world-view, we are heretics who must not only be punished for our apostasy but be seen to be punished for it. If that sounds quasi-religious, it’s because it is. These negotiations were pre-destined to be acrimonious.
It’s clear from this comprehensive, up-to-date summary, including all the developments of the past week, that behind the spin disseminated via the headline/soundbite-wanting media lie some potentially insoluble points of contention.
Fishing is the obvious and arguably also the most difficult one since, despite its relative insignificance economically, it is hugely important politically and even almost symbolically, given its public profile: one can easily see it being the bellwether by which the whole deal is judged. The UK has rejected both keeping current levels of access for other EU member-states, and sequencing. It could be the difference between an agreement and WTO.
The so-called level playing field and rules of origin issue, and I think we can expect EU obduracy on financial services, torn as it is between mercantilist envy of the City’s dominance and knowledge of EU firms’ dependence on it. Generally, if the EU refuses to budge on demanding its own legal order be supervening, the UK has made it clear there will be no agreement. Don’t delete your online WTO guide just yet.
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The British monarchy should consider skipping a generation, to obviate the risk of its institutional survival being threatened by its political neutrality being compromised
As the behaviour of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex becomes ever more bizarre and unreasonable, the Prince of Wales is increasingly skating on thin ice. In continuing to support them financially, and by not explicitly criticising them, he appears, if not to condone their conduct, then at least to tolerate it. For the monarchy as an institution, this matters.
Since the Sussexes negotiated the terms of their withdrawal from public duties a month ago, both their intransigence and apparent selfishness as a couple, and for Prince Harry, his alienation from his family and former allegiances, have accelerated.
Their participation in a Goldman Sachs corporate event in Miami, allegedly negotiated up to a year in advance of their quitting the Royal Family – and at which Prince Harry delivered, for a fee of up to £750,000, what was by reliable accounts a rambling, semi-incoherent speech on his mental struggles in coming to terms with his mother’s death – attracted widespread criticism, not only of profiting from it, but also of eco-hypocrisy in travelling to and from Miami by private jet.
Nor was that the Duke’s only recent instance of rampant eco-hypocrisy. He’s just announced his plan to launch a new online scoring system to help tourists pick the most eco-friendly flights and hotels, ‘to bring more transparency around carbon [sic] emissions’ and promote ‘sustainability frameworks’. The launch event was in Edinburgh this week, and of course, he flew in for it. You might think this is all a bit rich, coming from someone who justified his own extensive use of private jets – 4 times in 11 days at one point during 2019 – as necessary for his family’s safety.
Matters have escalated from there. Although reluctantly agreeing to discontinue use of the ‘SussexRoyal’ brand – the plan to haul the Queen into Court presumably not having survived the first consultation with M’Learned Friends – it’s clear, reports Camilla Tominey in the Daily Telegraph, that the Sussexes don’t plan to go quietly. As is shown by the somewhat hostile and resentful tone of the statement issued via their website on 21 February, implying that the ban on their use of the ‘SussexRoyal’ brand is somehow ultra vires and unenforceable, but that they will graciously condescend to go along with it anyway.
Prince Harry’s abandonment of the former military commitments which earned him praise and respect continues apace. Managing to annoy the organisers of the Invictus Games, which he did so much to establish and publicise, by withdrawing from any future direct involvement, was disappointing enough.
If I’ve dwelt on these incidents in detail, it’s to highlight the reaction – or rather the lackof reaction – from his father, the Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne. The Royal Family is famously tight-lipped, and one wouldn’t ordinarily expect a father publicly to condemn his son, out of ordinary filial affection. However, the Prince of Wales is no ordinary father, but one with constitutional, as well as parental, obligations. If his son’s actions could impinge on the monarchy and on his own constitutional position, his silence is perhaps no longer appropriate.
The last definite indication from the Prince of Wales on the subject appears to be in media reports of early to mid-January that he is prepared to keep on funding them, notwithstanding their intention to make as much money as possible out of their royal connections, and even, according to some online sources, to support them both financially and quasi-constitutionally, should they decide to return to Britain.
Nor does it end there: because they will deign to carry out a few public duties of their choosing, the taxpayer will still be responsible for estimated annual costs of up to £20 million for their security.
I believe that, in financing and indulging the Sussexes’ insufferable, narcissistic, über-woke posturing and petulance to the extent that he has, the Prince of Wales is risking his own tolerance by the British people. He seems guilty of failing to appreciate that, should public anger and exasperation with them keep on growing, his popularity will fall along with theirs. That will reduce his acceptability as King, but he appears either oblivious to it or unconcerned about it.
Nor is this the only cloud hanging over his acceptability. He has long been notorious for recurring partisan interventions on ‘climate-change’, one of the most politically divisive issues of our time.
In fairness, his interest does date from when even benign, aesthetic, non-political environmentalism was unfashionable and viewed as niche, if not slightly weird. But when genuinely altruistic environmentalism got hijacked by the intensely political, anti-capitalist, catastrophist and eco-totalitarian Climatism of the Green-Left and became its eco-marxist creed, Charles either didn’t detect it or chose to ignore it, and promptly swallowed the entire deep-Green ideological package whole.
His interventions on the specifics are too numerous to list in detail, but his more recent ones on the generality illustrate the argument. His original ‘tipping point’ to ‘save the planet’ has varied from –
Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that in some of these he appears to have bought in entirely to the anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism message of the Green ideology.
It emerged in January this year that he’d flown 16,000 miles in 11 days, using three private jets, before posing proudly with the exploited, manipulated ‘climate’-puppet Greta Thunberg at WEF Davos, where the globalist, crony-corporatist, transnational, post-democratic oligarchy discussed earnestly the need for a worldwide ‘carbon’ [sic] tax to discourage the hoi-polloi from flying, before catching their own private jets home.
If the Queen can drive a relatively hard bargain with the Sussexes, she really ought to have no qualms at all about giving Prince Charles an unequivocal warning that, notwithstanding his intense personal interest, to protect the monarchy’s neutrality he must end his interventions on such a divisive subject.
Unless as King he desists from partisan interventions in this most highly disputed of political issues, the present Prince of Wales will be a disaster for the monarchy; but sadly, his stubbornness and petulance will probably make him ignore it.
As is indicated by his previous record of political meddling. Many will probably recall what became known as the Black Spider Memos affair, when, after a protracted legal dispute, centred around the Freedom of Information Act, to prevent their disclosure, the Cabinet Office eventually released the portfolio of Prince Charles’ letters to ministers of the then elected government, persistently advocating for policy changes on a wide range of subjects.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Prince of Wales’ political views, on climate change or any other issue, is immaterial. In his position, we should not even be aware of what they are, as with the present Queen. He should stay totally out of the political arena, so as not to jeopardise the status of the monarchy within the Constitution.
Almost certainly, however, he will refuse to do so. The fictional analogy of To Play the King, the second novel in Michael Dobbs’ House of Cards trilogy, in which a newly-crowned monarch with strong political views opposes the elected Prime Minister, but whose abdication is eventually engineered by the PM, could become a reality.
The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Mountbatten-Windsor lineage enjoys above-average longevity. The present Queen’s mother lived to 101, and she herself, though inevitably frailer physically at 93, still appears in full possession of her faculties, including a degree of both subtlety and ruthlessness in the way she has dismissed the Sussexes’ more selfish demands.
So we face the prospect of Prince Charles, already 71 and the longest-serving heir to the throne, not succeeding her until possibly well into his late 70s. Should he, in turn, live as long as his mother and grandmother, Prince William, now 37 and along with his wife hugely popular, could easily have to wait until his early 60s before even becoming King. The precedent that likely to be set by his father does not inspire confidence that a long period as heir to the throne is a guarantor of good Kingship.
Skipping a generation, aside from all its other advantages, could alleviate that. In contrast to the abdication-now, Prince-Charles-must-take-the reins solution advanced by Matthew Parris, who presumably sees as a Good Thing the accession to the throne of a fellow ‘liberal’ inclined to political meddling on behalf of fashionable but democratically unpopular causes, it is to Prince William whom his grandmother should hand the reins.
Despite all its recent scandals and troubles, support for the monarchy, both as an institution and as part of the Constitution, remains strong.
Taking everything into account do you think the institution of the monarchy is good or bad for Britain?
Good for Britain 52%
Bad for Britain 13%
Neither good nor bad 28%
Don’t know 7%
As I’ve stated previously, it seems Brits not only understand the distinction between the monarchy as an institution and the personality flaws of some of its current members. They also recognise that, for all its faults, it’s still preferable to having some tainted, divisive, political has-been, or some washed-up grubby ex-“celebrity”, as an ‘elected’ Head of State.
But the present Prince of Wales may well prove an awkward, controversial, unsatisfactory monarch, and opinion may change as a result. It’s significant, in my view, that the Republican Left is presently silent. With the widespread disapproval of the Sussexes’ actions and the financial implications, you might expect it to be more vocal in calling for the monarchy itself to be abolished on the death of the present Queen.
Given by the enormous popularity – and, at present, considerable sympathy at her cavalier treatment at the hands of her grandson – enjoyed by the Queen, could it be waiting for the more promising opportunity to bring about abolition which would arise with a controversial and unpopular King Charles on the throne? Or could it be calculating that radical Green-Left policies stand a better chance of being enacted with the imprimatur of the occupant of the throne?
The monarchy skipping a generation would obviously be a massive constitutional issue, with formidable legal and technical obstacles to be overcome procedurally. It would almost certainly be made even more so by the stubborn resistance of the current heir, who is doggedly determined to claim his constitutional inheritance and re-shape the monarchy, but in ways that aren’t necessarily conducive to it enduring beyond his reign. But happen it must.
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A weekend update on some recent key Brexit-relevant story headlines, choosing four which, while not necessarily meriting a full-length article, nevertheless warrant a paragraph or two of comment, rather than merely a couple of lines. (NB: (£) denotes article behind paywall.)
Global Vision’s Shanker Singham on how, having originally offered Britain a Canada-style free trade deal with add-ons, the EU has backtracked to the extent of demanding a provision which it doesn’t insist on even in its FTAs with China and the USA: namely a guarantee that whenever the EU changed its laws, the UK would follow suit, in perpetuity. This would in effect subordinate our own trade’s legal architecture to EU state aid rules and ECJ oversight.
Brussels also demands what it calls ‘dynamic regulatory alignment’; meaning in effect that, to secure a FTA, the UK would need to become a rule-taker from Brussels with no say in how those rules were set. Both moves are perfect examples of the intransigence which caused us to vote to leave in the first place. But Johnson will need to be watched to ensure there is no backsliding or dilution of our refusal to capitulate to this.
An argument whose first premise has been amply borne out this week by Brussels’ attempt to move the goalposts, firstly, by trying to hedge a Canada-style deal about with onerous conditions, in what looks like a naked attempt to hobble Britain’s ability to compete against an over-regulated, sclerotic EU.
With the growing presence of nation-state populists in both member-state and European parliaments, making Brussels desperate to make life outside the bloc as difficult as possible for Britain, the argument’s second premise is no less valid.
Very much at the forefront of Eurocrats’ minds, in the sense of trying to show the remaining 27 member-states, by its treatment of Britain, just how difficult it will make life outside the bloc for any other country which decided to emulate Britain and leave, taking its contributions with it. Brexit leaves a €75 billion-sized hole in the next 7-year budget.
The implications for member-states’ internal politics are significant. Germany’s extra payments are 6 times France’s, and Merkel’s CDU is under electoral pressure from the Eurosceptic AfD. France’s low-level Gilets Jaunes insurrection each weekend shows no sign of abating, and the Marion Maréchal (Le Pen) led Rassemblement Nationale expects to make big gains in this year’s French municipal elections. Just to make life more difficult for Macron, the Dutch, with an economy only one-third the size of France’s, are objecting to paying EU contributions 70 per cent higher than France’s.
To which headline must of course first be added the caveat: if he becomes Labour leader. Admittedly, it looks unlikely that he won’t, but Rebecca Long-Bailey has the endorsement of Len McClusky’s Unite Union and, as far as I can establish, no candidate has ever won the Labour leadership without it.
In the short term, Starmer as leader will impact more on Labour’s internal politics than on the course of Britain’s exit. Johnson has a compliant Parliamentary party with an unassailable majority, so Starmer won’t be forcing any change of policy. He will however be far more soft-Brexity and even Rejoin-inclined than Corbyn, so could arouse some disquiet among Labour MPs in Brexit-voting seats who narrowly survived December’s massacre and could be the next bricks in Labour’s Red Wall to tumble.
What he will bring to the table, however, is a lawyer’s far greater ability than Corbyn possessed to absorb the fine detail of any agreements, and then subject Johnson to forensic questioning on them. Boris is a big-picture blusterer, not a details man, so he could well under-perform when put under this kind of pressure. Coupled with growing resentment at his eco-policies, this could well cause his popularity and approval ratings to dip. So Starmer could impact internal Tory politics as well.
What these four articles taken together show is that the EU is visibly in big trouble on several fronts. Not mentioned in any of the four above is the mountain of bank debt on the books of the ECB, which potentially limits it from engaging in any further quantitative easing to try and boost currently slowing growth in the sclerotic Eurozone.
If only our own negotiators would recognise it, and leverage it to drive a harder and more advantageous deal for Britain. Though if the evident intransigence of the EU is a guide, it surely increases the chance of our eventual exit on WTO terms.
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With Johnson’s dramatic announcements of his intent, both to decriminalise non-payment of the BBC licence-fee and even to consider its outright abolition, already starting to be hastily softened and diluted, it’s justifiable to ask whether both won’t eventually be abandoned under pressure
It all began so well. On 14 December, under 48 hours after his stunning election victory, Prime Minister Boris Johnson initiated moves to decriminalise non-payment of the coercive, regressive, household TV-signal receivability poll-tax inaccurately known as the BBC ‘licence-fee’.
It was hardly unexpected. During the final week of the election campaign, Johnson had already condemned the iniquity of people being forced to fund the BBC despite having no wish to consume its output, and had raised the prospect at least of its outright abolition.
He correctly branded it a tax – as had the House of Lords as long ago as 2006 when it determined that it was indeed a tax and not the ‘service-fee’ which the BBC disingenuously claimed and continues to claim – and his chief strategist Dominic Cummings was reported to be working on proposals for alternative ways for the Corporation to fund itself.
As relevant as these considerations are, they’re in some ways almost secondary: because abolition of the licence-fee, or at the very minimum, decriminalisation of its non-payment, should, on principle alone, be so uncontroversial as to incontestable, given that a BBC TV licence is mandatory on pain of fine or even imprisonment, even if the householder wishes to consume only non-BBC output.
It’s a statist, authoritarian funding model, more suited to a dreary 1960s socialist semi-dictatorship than a modern liberal democracy with competitive free markets. In a multi-platform, multi-provider broadcast environment, where we access hundreds of TV and radio channels, on computers, tablets or smartphones, inside or outside, at home or travelling, at any time, the BBC’s household TV-signal receivability poll-tax is anachronistic and outmoded to the point of obsolescence. It’s increasingly unenforceable, and ultimately doomed.
As an analogy, imagine being forced to pay Waitrose an annual £157 ‘trolley-tax’, just for the ability to choose always to shop elsewhere. Imagine being forced to pay British Airways an annual £157 ‘flight-tax’, just for the ability to choose always to fly FlyBe or Easyjet. Well, that’s the BBC ‘licence-fee’.
In the days following Johnson’s 14 December announcement, with ministers already instructed to boycott the BBC’s flagship Today Programme over credible allegations of its consistent anti-Brexit and anti-Conservative biases, it received widespread praise and approval from voters and commentariat alike, by no means all of them slavish Tory-supporters or Boris-worshippers.
A Savanta-ComRes poll found that BBC News was less trusted than ITV News on perceptions of impartiality and accuracy: that two-thirds of respondents believed the licence-fee should be either scrapped or substantially reformed: and that half of all under-55s would prefer to receive news free from commercial broadcasters funded by advertising, rather than pay for it via the BBC licence-fee.
This notable unanimity between public and punditocracy continued into the New Year, the apparently imminent decriminalisation of the licence-fee given impetus, it seemed, by the announcement of the departure of the BBC’s Director-General.
Then came the Brexit Weekend of 31st January – 1st February, when the BBC, far from demonstrating any acknowledgement of, much less contrition for, the precipitous decline in its audiences’ toleration of its coercive funding model and of its inherent institutional bias, simply doubled down on its contempt for its captive customers, as I described in detail here a week or so ago. And then promptly compounded it by announcing, on Monday 3rd February, an increasein its so-called ‘licence-fee’.
Only a month before, a Public First poll found 75 per cent of respondents supporting abolition of the licence-fee outright, and 60 per cent favouring the decriminalisation of non-payment, indicating both greater dissatisfaction with the BBC and greater willingness to see its funding reformed than reflected in the Saventa-ComRes poll mentioned earlier.
Rarely can a set of political circumstances have been so propitious for a recently elected government to implement a pre-election pledge for an easy win, to widespread approval. So we waited for what seemed the inevitable announcement.
And then something changed.
In the week after Brexit Weekend, a rather more hesitant, cautious, non-committal tone has started to emerge from certain Conservative Party figures and Government sources. It was very noticeable during an extended interview on Talk Radio between host Mike Graham and John Whittingdale MP, the former Tory Culture Secretary.
By way of background, it’s worth recalling that Whittingdale was Culture Secretary at the time of the last BBC Charter Review in 2016; but also that, having previously voiced some disobliging opinions about the BBC in general –
anticipating its demise as ‘a tempting prospect’;
criticising it for abusing its privileged position and protected funding by merely chasing ratings rather than producing new content; and
describing the licence-fee as ‘worse than the poll tax’,
he was sacked by Theresa May in her first Cabinet reshuffle after becoming PM after it had mysteriously – or perhaps fortuitously – emerged earlier in that Charter Review year of 2016 that he had had a previous relationship with a sex worker, his sacking prompting an outpouring of Twitter-joy by prominent BBC lefty-luvvies who might well have had good reason to fear a different BBC funding model reliant on persuading customers voluntarily to part company with their hard-earned cash.
His discussion with Mike Graham on Wednesday 5th February is very much more emollient and less critical than his previous opinions. Instead, he comes out with stuff like this:
“there are serious issues to address for the BBC, in that the broadcasting world is changing very rapidly, there is now a huge choice available which simply didn’t exist before”
“the BBC clearly needs to reconsider at this point what its place is and what it change it needs to make”
“in terms of the licence, I mean all that’s being announced today is a consultation about whether or not to decriminalise, which is something that we looked at before, but which we said should be kept under review, but I think that in the longer term there is a case for asking whether or not the licence is still an appropriate means of financing the BBC”
By all means listen to the interview and study the transcript for yourself: but to me it suggests a party and government starting to row back from its implied promises, and almost leaving it to the BBC itself to decide its future funding method.
On the same day, current Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan – she who declined to stand again as MP for Loughborough because of the time pressures of politics on her private family life, but nevertheless accepted a Peerage from Johnson so as to remain Culture Secretary for a mere few weeks but then adorn the Lords’ red benches for life – agreed that the BBC licence-fee could indeed disappear.
But, er, not before 2027.
In other words, for the remaining 7 years of the current 10-year Charter period, the funding model based on the coercive, regressive, household TV-signal receivability tax would be sacrosanct. Bizarrely, Morgan suggested that this showed the government was ‘taking heed of public opinion’. She then went on to echo Whittingdale by confirming that what was being launched was merely a ‘consultation’ on whether non-payment of the licence-fee should be decriminalised. Cue sound of ball landing in long grass.
Three days later, Morgan was back, this time with the revelation that the licence fee might not in fact be scrapped outright, but replaced by ‘tiered levels of access’ in which viewers could choose the level of services they required. Significantly absent was any mention of no payment being required from those who don’t wish to consume BBC output at all; presumably, therefore, under this ‘tiered levels of access’ model, there would still be a minimum level payable anyway, so it would still be both coercive and amount to a regressive tax, as now.
It’s reasonable to wonder why the Government needs its own ‘consultation’ at all. The work has already been done. Only 4 months ago, the Institute of Economic Affairs published its policy-paper ‘New Vision: Liberating the BBC from the licence-fee“, whose main recommendations, transforming the Corporation into a subscriber-owned Mutual, summarised here, were –
The nature of the broadcast market has changed to such a degree that public service broadcasting, the current definition of which used by Ofcom is no longer coherent, should no longer be delivered largely by one institution.
Niche providers are often better than the BBC at ensuring the broadcasting of good quality content to meet minority tastes.
The fact that the market for broadcasting is now an international industry means that many artistic, educational and cultural programmes, which might not have been economic in the past, may now be economic and not need subsidy.
Changes in technology mean that the current approach to financing, owning and regulating the BBC is no longer tenable.
The BBC should be financed by subscription and owned by its subscribers, enabling it to determine different subscription models for different markets
The BBC should lose its legal privileges and be treated in the same way as al other news and media organisations for competition and other purposes
Johnson professes himself a fan of ‘oven-ready’ solutions. This is one he could prepare and serve right away, restricted only by the time it takes to pass legislation revoking the current BBC Charter and allow the BBC a reasonable, but not excessive, duration in which to transition to its new funding model.
Since Johnson won the election, there have been several disturbing hints that he might be resiling from some of the positions he previously appeared to espouse robustly. Immigration reduction, HS2 and Huawei all come to mind, and that’s before the tentative ‘squeeze the rich’ Budget proposals. trailed and rightly excoriated as disincentivising and un-conservative over the weekend of 8-9 February.
Now it starts to look as if the Biased BBC and its iniquitous ‘licence-fee’ might be going the same way. Superficially, it’s difficult to see why, given the public support the proposal enjoyed and continues to enjoy. In footballing terms, Johnson has the ball at his feet with an open goal gaping in front of him, and the crowd roaring him on. Has he –
panicked at the first contact with the enemy; or
gone native after institutional capture by a BBC-Whitehall pincer movement; or
never ever had any genuine intention of decriminalisation or abolition anyway?
Or is there something more profound, even darker and more cynical, at work?
In his new book “The Fake News Factory – Tales from BBC-Land”, a searing excoriation of the BBC, its bias, and its abuse of the power derived from its uniquely privileged position and jealously-guarded protected funding, author David Sedgwick suggests a possible answer.
It is that Boris’ Johnson’s recent sabre-rattling about the BBC has much more to do with his personal annoyance at how it has intruded on his private life, most notably during the recent election campaign, than it has to do with any principles-originating conviction that its current coercive funding model is illiberal, authoritarian, and a wrong that must be righted.
Brexit apart, suggests Sedgwick, as a metropolitan ‘liberal’-‘progressive’ Conservative, Johnson is, politically, largely in tune with the left-of-centre, state-interventionist, Green, socio-culturally Woke institutional groupthink of the BBC, on whose propaganda the political class relies heavily to get its message across. And that, with this worldview predominant in the Conservative Party in its current iteration, not much can be expected of it in taking the behemoth of the BBC on.
More recent developments certainly seem to bear this out. In Johnson’s recent Cabinet and Government reshuffle, the post of Culture and Media Secretary, carrying responsibility for the BBC, went as predicted to ‘rising star’ Oliver Dowden, Remainer, Cameroon, ex-SpAd & party-insider. With at least one careerist eye no doubt fixed on future promotion, the prospect of him rocking the BBC boat looks remote.
Appointed as a Minister of State alonside him was none other than former Culture and Media Secretary John Whittingdale, whose hedging and non-committal remarks about the BBC ‘licence-fee’ to Talk Radio‘s Mike Graham were described earlier.
To complete the hat-trick, elected as Chairman of the Commons Select Committee to scrutinse the DCMS was Tory MP Julian Knight, whose first contribution to the ‘licence-fee’ debate was to suggest that imprisonment for non-payment should be replaced by stiffer fines. Given that most ‘licence-fee dodgers’, as he put it, who get convicted don’t pay because of financial hardship – not surprising with the ‘licence-fee’ being a regressive tax – all that bigger fines would do is increase the number of people given a criminal record. Brilliant. The idea of abolishing the regressive tax instead had clearly not occurred to him.
These three appointments, and the developments preceding them, hardly suggest that Johnson’s robust-sounding pledges on the BBC’s iniquitous ‘licence-fee’ will be carried through swiftly and eagerly. Or at all. To answer the question posed in the title: Yes, almost certainly – Johnson will indeed wimp out.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Chief of Staff Dominic Cummings are exploiting the ability of new-media to reverse the power-relationship between the Government and the traditional mainstream press
Cast your mind back to the immediate aftermath of Trump’s formal Inauguration ceremony as the 45th POTUS in Washington DC on Friday 20th January 2017, and the furore over the size of the crowd. That started when Trump took to Twitter to castigate the overwhelmingly hostile Liberal – i.e., left-wing in US political parlance – media for deliberately under-reporting both the number of spectators, which he put at 1½ million, and the size of the TV audience, which he claimed was the biggest in history.
Outrage duly ensued. For virtually the entire next two weeks, the media devoted nearly all of its resources and reporting to proving him wrong. TV stations were bombarded with requests for their respective audience viewing figures, so that they could be aggregated. Fact-checkers enjoyed a rush of business. Crowd-size scientists were swiftly engaged. The talking heads in the news studios debated endlessly how many people the eastern half of the Mall, extending from the steps of the Capitol to the Washington Monument, could theoretically hold. Camera footage from helicopters was obtained, to estimate crowd densities and apply these to the measured area of known spaces.
While the Liberal media’s attention was focused almost exclusively on desperately trying for its anti-Trump Gotcha! moment, however, Trump’s attention was elsewhere. During those two weeks he initiated the process of reviewing, de-fanging and ultimately de-funding the Environmental Protection Agency, whose ideological capture by the Green movement and the ‘Climate-Change’ Industrial-Complex had helped to advance the eco-socialist agendas of both during the Obama years. Only The Guardian appeared to pick it up. By the time the mass of the US media cottoned on to it in the second half of March, and predictably clutched its pearls in a collective attack of the vapours, the process was well under way and virtually irreversible.
In short, as neat a way as you’re likely to find, outside the pages of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, of neutralising the enemy’s strength by turning it against itself.
I was reminded of this on Monday afternoon, as the row broke about No 10 Downing Street’s Director of Communications allegedly denying some accredited journalists access to Lobby briefings, the long-established system of privileged access enjoyed by the political correspondents of the major traditional newspapers and broadcasters.
For anyone who hadn’t followed the initial stages of this saga on Media Guido, the Lobby briefings were recently moved from the House of Commons to No 9 Downing Street, ostensibly on security grounds, but accompanied by some “inner Lobby” hacks being selectively invited to special briefings, with others excluded. On Monday afternoon, though, the entire Lobby walked out in protest, although the circumstances are, to put it mildly, disputed.
No10’s version of events
“Full briefing happened for all. Smaller selected briefing for specialist senior journalists (incl guardian) arranged. Uninvited Journalists barged in and demanded to be part of it. It was made clear – only those invited could stay. They chose to leave”
As Dan Johnson of The Article points out, the Lobby doth perhaps protest too much. The system is itself antiquated, is incompatible with the growth and increasing influence of New Media, functions as a restrictive-practice closed-shop run for the benefit of its members, and thus secures them competitive advantage over their rivals.
All true, but what struck me was the immediate Press reaction, and then the consequential implications for the way government communicates with the voting public, and vice versa.
Just as with their American media counterparts three years ago, outrage and hyperbole duly ensued. Huffing and puffing (appropriately, you might think, from The Huffington Post) was the order of the day.
I can safely say that in 22 years of being a political journalist, I’ve never experienced a day like today.
No.10 sources now insisting that political editors like myself “are not banned, they are just not invited”.https://t.co/tcWGZeHSot
Not very long elapsed before references to “Goebbels” and “fascism” were being bandied about, the principle of Reductio ad Hitlerum never being particularly far away when the Fourth Estate feels its dignity slighted. The incident represented a ‘frightening attempt by Johnson to exclude unsympathetic press’ apparently. . .
@bbclaurak@Peston@BethRigby Hats off to you, and other journalists who boycotted this afternoon’s No 10 briefing in protest at the frightening attempt by Johnson to exclude unsympathetic press. #BrexitBritain#BritainTrump
. . . although how a government that wanted to ‘exclude unsympathetic press‘ would have included BBC News, ITV News, Sky News & the Guardian in the specially-selected inner group invited to stay for the specialist briefing was not immediately obvious.
I suspect Dominic Cummings is the mastermind behind this, is taking a leaf out of the Trump media-playbook, and is doing it brilliantly.
For all their complaining, some sections of the traditional, established (and Establishment) media really have only themselves to blame if their past few years’ conduct is, as appears to be the case, leading ordinary people to accord their account of Monday afternoon’s events in Downing Street no greater credibility than the Government’s own version.
One gets an increasing impression of a general public sick and tired of significant parts of the journalistic profession eschewing proper factual and impartial reporting and analysis in favour of slanting, opining and trying to tell it what and how to think. Not to mention sneering at, demonising and insulting it whenever its opinion dares to differ from the homogeneous groupthink of those same parts of the media’s incestuous left-‘liberal’ metropolitanism.
Take the BBC’s discharge of its Charter obligations over the past few days. How did it choose to mark Brexit Day?
By refusing to broadcast the elected Prime Minister’s speech to the nation on the cusp of its most significant constitutional change in half a century, while covering the event in a way that left little room for doubt as to where its sympathies lie.
By sending a reporter to the celebrations in Parliament Square to ask participants whether the crowd wasn’t ’too white’. LBC’s Julia Hartley Brewer’s comment speaks for itself.
BBC reporter to Brexiteers celebrating in Parliament Square: “It’s a very white crowd”.
When she reports at the Notting Hill Carnival, does she point out the “very black crowd” to the people she interviews too? pic.twitter.com/YleztCrLeq
By reporting the crowd in Parliament Square as ‘a few hundred’. After which I decided, having been there, to try a little ‘crowd-science’ for myself. Measuring on Google Earth, the celebration area being used was roughly 6,500m2. Where my fellow-revellers and I were, the density was probably 3 people per m2, but let’s say 2.5 people per m2 on average. That equates to possibly 15,000 people, maybe 18,000, but certainly not less than 12,000. Rather more than ‘a few hundred’, anyway.
Finally, on Monday, and with quite impeccable timing in view of the opprobrium rightly heaped on it over Brexit Weekend, the BBC announced an increase in its so-called ‘licence fee’ – or, to label it more accurately, its coercive, regressive, household TV-signal receivability tax.
The impression of an organisation knowing it has lost the trust of its audience and therefore doubling-down with impunity on its contempt for it, is hard to dispel. As is equally, though, the impression of anti-BBC opinion specifically and anti-media opinion generally, perhaps the previously restrained expression of dissatisfaction with both, having ramped up exponentially after last weekend.
I suspect Dominic Cummings knows this, and is choosing his moment carefully, judging that the public may now be more reluctant to support the media in a spat with government than for a very long time: and also that, if the mainstream established Press thinks that this is the time to go to war with Downing Street, then it’s making a big mistake.
No 10 Downing Street cut the BBC out of its production of Boris Johnson’s Brexit Day address completely, preferring to use its own in-house videographer and then distribute it via social-media simultaneously with making it available to the mainstream TV news channels. It’s this – apart from the content of course, which must have been anathema to the BBC – which is apparently thought to be a significant factor in the BBC refusing to broadcast it.
This has been coming for years. It’s over a decade ago now that Peter Wilby, former editor of both the Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman, led the chorus of old-media criticism directed at then Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan’s demolition of then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the European Parliament, which became such a hit on YouTube.
Wilby went on record afterwards as saying –
“The online success of Daniel Hannan’s speech…………proves what we knew: the internet lacks quality control”.
Prompting Hannan’s memorable reply –
“Yup. That’s the thing about the internet: it turns the quality filters off. Until very recently, few of us could get political news direct from source. It had to be interpreted for us by a BBC man with a microphone or a newspaper’s political correspondent. Now, though, people can make their own minds up. The message has been disintermediated.
What Mr Wilby seems to mean when he complains that the internet “lacks quality control” is not that my speech was ungrammatical, or shoddily constructed, but that its content was disagreeable. The quality filters he evidently has in mind would screen out points of view that he considers unacceptable.”
Finally, the mainstream media is becoming less and less crucial to the communication process between government and governed, with social media engagement figures climbing rapidly.
Cummings, I’d surmise, is only too aware of this, hence the apparent willingness to treat the mainstream media with considerably less deference than it feels entitled to as of right, based on its assumption of its historic dominance continuing. New channels of inter-communication between electors and elected, however, risk its decline in significance accelerating.
In the same way that Trump often does, Number Ten is playing a hostile media like a violin, And it’s working.
Thoroughly agree with this article? Vehemently disagree with it?
If the Queen can drive a relatively hard bargain with the Sussexes, she really ought to have no qualms at all about giving Prince Charles an unequivocal warning that, notwithstanding his intense personal interest, to protect the monarchy’s neutrality he must end his interventions on such a divisive subject.
A Libertarian Rebel 