The Telegraph wonders about….
The baffling recovery of Teflon Labour and Unpopular Ed
Politics sometimes throws up great mysteries. Why does public spending always rise and never fall? How did Gordon Brown ever become Prime Minister? Why is David Cameron still clinging to his pledge on overseas aid?
Nothing, however, is quite so head-scratching at the moment as the success of the Labour Party. The Tories are certainly puzzled – and terrified – by it. So are plenty of Labour people, many of whom can’t quite believe that things are going so well for Her Majesty’s Opposition. On current trends, it is entirely rational to expect that it will be returned with an overall majority in 2015, or will at least finish as the largest party, and that Ed Miliband will become prime minister.
The reason is simple….the BBC runs cover for Labour.
Those responsible for thirteen years of mis-manangement and the destruction of the economy have been written out of history…..or if forced to mention any of that, the word ‘Labour’ won’t be.
Only this morning on Today we had a woman talking about the death of her mother in Mid-Staffs…she blamed the staff, the management and, she said, ‘it went all the way up to Whitehall’. Humphrys completely ignored the ‘Whitehall’ responsibility and didn’t ask her why she thought that.
The BBC has covered up Labour’s deliberate and highly dangerous immigration policy…..not just covered up the Macchiavellian thinking behind it (to ‘brown’ the population and ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’…regardless of the effects on the working class in the housing and jobs market) but went on to promote it as a positive benefit for the Nation.
The BBC has relentlessly attacked the government’s economic policy….actually promoting Labour’s own ‘Plan B’…..and even as a recovery is in sight they denounce it as ‘the wrong sort of recovery’.
It has relentlessly attacked the government’s welfare reforms, going so far as to adopt Labour’s preferred language such as the dreaded ‘Bedroom Tax’.
It has relentlessly attacked reform to the NHS….whilst, as said, hiding Labour’s deadly record whilst in charge.
It has relentlessly defended Ed Miliband…..covering up his knowledge and complicity in the Unite vote rigging, and launching an all out attack on the Daily Mail when it criticised the thoughts of Father Ralph….even now bringing Ed on to Desert Island Discs to try to humanise his image, no doubt with heart warming tales of his ‘Dad’ and family life.
It has relentlessly backed his ‘Price freeze on energy’ without a rigorous challenge and examination of his claims….he claimed there is a failure of the Market and competition…only to go himself to a smaller company to make savings….as did hundreds of thousands of other people….the market wasn’t failing…it was just people not doing their research combined with apathy.
Cameron himself must carry a lot of the blame….for he bowed to BBC pressure and remodelled his policies to suit the progressive left.
Having said that his lies about the EU referendum, lies that still roll off his tongue, his profligacy with aid money, his posturing on immigration, but above all his failure to make so many lower income people believe he has policies that include them and will improve their lives, all add up to a serious failure to ‘connect’ and a subsequent massive lack of support in certain areas.
Miliband makes huge promises that are just crowd pleasing, populist soundbites….he either can’t or won’t deliver on those promises when the time comes….but the BBC gives him enormous positive coverage and headlines that have a ‘feel good’ appeal but an enormous lack of substance.
The BBC is selling Hope to the masses for Miliband, hoping that that will translate into votes.
Much as they did for Obama.
And look where the USA is now.
Just how did that hopey dopey thing work out for ya?
Alan, I’m not sure the woman on Today did say it went up to Whitehall. I thought what she said was ambiguous. My recollection of the interview is that she said it went up to the managers who reported to Whitehall – a small difference, but it could be taken to imply that she didn’t blame Whitehall as it wasn’t being told what was going on.
I was hoping Humphrys would probe that to see what she actually meant and wondered if he didn’t ask because he was happy to leave the ambiguity there.
Humphrys asked ‘Who do you hold responsible?’
She replied….‘The failings were from the ward, to the Board, and from the Board to Whitehall.’
Don’t think any ambiguity there.
Thanks. I was in the car at the time, and picked it up as being the Board not reporting to Whitehall.
Alan I totally agree with you. Brogan’s analysis missed the role of the BBC completely. Unless those who oppose Labour start to realise how crucial the role of the BBC is in persuading voters how to vote, they will find the odds increasingly stacked against them.
The near monopoly status of the BBC allows it to dictate what is and isn’t news, what is perceived by the public as good and what is perceived as bad. Even if the BBC were scrupulous in following its charter and was absolutely impartial, its has far too greater share of news and current affairs broadcasting for a healthy democracy. We need plurality of views , some extreme left and some far right with most in between, so that we can hear wide ranging debate and then make up our own minds. Currently we just have the BBC peddling liberal left propaganda and supporting Labour to the hilt.
‘Brogan’s analysis missed the role of the BBC completely.’
Comments… most pretty high on the scale of likes… didn’t.
Yes Alan and Doublethinker as I started to read Brogan’s piece my first thought was that he was missing the role of the BBC in Teflon Labour – and I am not sure why.
One problem we have today is the misrepresentation of the ‘working classes’. As far as the BBC is concerned, those who go out to work and are getting by under their own steam are, by all means, lower middle class, but those who are dependent on welfare are the true working class. I wonder where the BBC find some of the people they constantly plonk onto BBC News when it comes to highlighting the plight of ‘the poor’. They must have a ‘poor peoples agency’ who supplies them.
We hear about the rise in numbers of people using food banks, but the BBC never ask why more people are using them. Could there be a connection to the rising numbers of bookies on our high streets? Do people have more drug addictions nowadays? Or is it genuinely an issue of not enough money?
I doubt it.
But I think the main reason Labour is still so popular is 2-fold.
Firstly, most voters are politically and economically ignorant. They judge the book by its cover and simply cannot be bothered to read the contents. Miliband and the Labour party know this only too well. They don’t give a shit about the working class, but convince us by coming up with cheap policies based on attacking nasty rich people by stealing more of their money and freezing fuel prices and such like which will actually benefit rich people more than it will poor! Whose side are they on?
Secondly, the Conservatives are out of touch with the electorate. Cameron is missing an absolute trick by continuing the Blair ‘Mr Nice Guy Who Can’t Put A Foot Wrong’ image. Cameron is trying too hard to please all of the people all of the time. He needs to learn that people who vote Conservative do so in spite of Labour’s attempts to smear the Tories as the nasty party. He needs to get the message out to the masses that Labour are trying to hoodwink the nation. That their policies are short term fixes that will leave us all worse off in the long-run. He and his colleagues mention these points, but never go into detail – perhaps they’re not allowed to?
If the BBC can go out of their way to present numerous, otherwise rare, extreme cases of people suffering poverty, they should be forced to declare the full facts about the circumstances, otherwise the issue becomes one of government failure rather than a situation which could, in some way at least, be improved without political interference.
But ,of course, that would mean actually having to think for ourselves for a change.
Excellent summing up of the current thinking Eddie !
I agree that the British electorate are politically naïve and lazy. This is in no doubt due, at least in part, to the efforts of our national broadcaster to frame the political debate within certain predetermined parameters, which they are only able to do as a result of their near monopoly position with respect to UK news provision.
I also agree that Cameron’s Conservatives are indeed out of touch with the electorate, on many levels, as evidenced by their unbending positions on overseas aid and Eastern European immigration.
With respect to the nation’s propaganda machine, Cameron is either:
1) in denial of the true nature of the threat posed to him and his party by the very real and ever present liberal left wing bias displayed by the BBC in most of its news and current affairs reporting,
2) aware of the BBC’s nefarious political machinations but unwilling to act in a decisive manner for fear of the consequences should the effort become politically unpopular , or
3) hoping mindlessly the BBC will turn to his support only if he manages to emulate the Blair creature for long enough.
Whichever is the true scenario, only one outcome is likely come May 2015, unless of course sufficient numbers of voters turn to UKIP in next May’s European elections to force the Conservative party to consider becoming Conservatives again.
Good post
Test.
Why am I unable to post a comment about the BBC’s lack of coverage on Falkirk?
too many links?
I hadn’t put any links in my post, or have I misunderstood?
I hadn’t put any links in the post, or have I misunderstood?
The BBC is undoubtedly a factor. Then again so is the overwhelming popular dislike (not to say contempt) for Cameron and his crew.
Labour’s ‘success’ is less a case of people supporting Milliband than of their refusing to support the quisling in number 10.
The notion of leadership by least awful is bad enough, but having the BBC skew the dire choices faced to leadership by whoever suits the national broadcaster’s interests best, and to hell with the country, is rather frightening.
We are in a culture war. We need to understand this. The liberal elite, the liberal media and above all the BBC is on the side of those who dream of a fantasy world ruled by the elite. In their eyes benign but in mine tyrannical.
There is to be no place for custom, tradition and the old concept of the rule of common law. Law is to serve the elite’s wishes.,subject to radical change to suit the liberal fantasy agenda
There is to be no place for the England of the last 1000 years. It is to be replaced by a 1000 year – shall I dare say Reich here-a so called mother /father state that will raise us feed us and kill us when it chooses.
It is the very antithesis of a nation based on freedom, individual responsibility and the rule of law.
This is the war we are engaged in. Hence I say do not argue with the liberal. Look to like minded people and to your family and to your love of old England.
The generations coming are the battleground. The corruption runs deep. In the schools and universities and in government.
Hold your children and grandchildren close for they are a precious resource and above all try to teach them who they are and what a fine people they come from.
Again I repeat those words of Solzhenitsyn
“Let your credo be this. Let the lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. But not through me. “
Vote UKIP
I just might at the Euro’s…but will not at the GE.
Just a couple of years of Miliband with absolutely destroy this country. As an Marxist entryist he will further embolden and activate the left wing establishment that was put in place in our institutions (the BBC included) to frustrate a non-socialist administration and he will ensure that there is continuity socialism.
Under Miliband we can whistle good-bye to what’s left of our democracy, freedoms and our economy.
Why?
And get Labour
The BBC undoubtedly plays a major role, but the reason Labour lead in the polls is simple, it is because their policy of mass immigration may have split the centre-right note between the Conservatives and UKIP who now regularly poll around 12 per cent. Of course this policy has been fully supported by the BBC.
When Labour got in 1997 I remember Hazel clears saying that Labour would change the country so that they would be in power for the next thousand years. I’m convinced this was their intention behind mass immigration. 80 per cent of ethnic votes go to Labour, and the split of the centre-right vote is an added bonus – but one that I am sure Labour foresaw and welcomed.
Labour will never ever admit to their real open-door motives. To do so would leave them dangerously exposed to a potential charge of genocide. They can destroy a traditional England or Britain and the concept of Britishness and exclude a whole political class as long as it is not ‘intentional’. To do so intentionally is the very definition of genocide. However, if it is merely a side effect of policy, no matter how predictable, then they can get away with it. For the same reason Blair and Campbell will never admit to lying over Iraq – it would lay them open to warcrimes charges. To their dying day they will insist that their motives were pure and honest and they really did believe Saddam had WMD.
mass immigration was used to destroy the natural conservative base in this country. They have admitted it so it isn’t even up for debate anymore.
” will split the centre-right note” ( sic).
Bodo, it doesn’t HAVE to be like that. The Conservatives could always adopt policies that appeal to ukip voters. Now you may argue that would drive the other 12% from Tory to somewhere else, who knows where. But it is in the hands of the Tories to neutralise the ukip threat if such exists.
However I’m certain a party with policies aimed at halting this country’s slide toward becoming a third world shithole would succeed.
Dammit. I use voice recognition software a lot to try and alleviate my RSI. I must proof read my posts better. ‘hazel clears’ ffs.
One reason that Labour gets away with what they did to this country is the likes of Martha Kearney on TWATO earlier.
Her programme started with the fact that the Co-Op head has resigned over letting Paul Flowers drag his bank into disrepute.
This Flowers bloke “allegedly was filmed dealing drugs” -bit like those Woolwich butchers “allegedly” appeared to have killed Lee Rigby.
Flowers was a Labour stooge who got the gig because it was the Labour-run Co-Op-he is on Milibands Finance Policy Advisory Group and gave £50,000 to Ed ablls for his leadership campaign, Indeed , the self-same CoOp Bank was cited by Labour and the BBC as everything that those nasty Tories and their City chums were not.
Oh dear.
Yet Kearney calls only Lord Paul Myners-Browns City fixer when the banks were set up to allow this corrupt cronyism and incompetence-to account for this. No Tories allowed I expect.
Myners regards all this-not as the slur that ought to make Labour a byword for “incompetent lying shit”-but as a blot on the Tories.
Come again?
And Kearney lets it go without laughing or letting a Tory take him to the cleaners.
Obviously-like mid-Staffs, like Baby P…all clearly Tory cock-ups…Labour were nowhere to be seen through all this.
Hope to God that the decent people in the country are NOT Radio 4 fodder and to be so treated by the left-liberal elite.
If they are-roll on Islam…at least the likes of Myners and Flowers will be put on the cranes before us…insh`allah.
Labour and the BBC…which is the nightsoil-which is the bucket?
I listened to this in the car and ended up shouting at the radio. For ten minutes he stated that the problem at the Co-op was ALL the fault of the Tories, everything, totally – well there may have been a wee bit of Labour involvement but just a bit and they have moved on. Now back to the Tories…. To be fair Martha did list and his arguments at the end and stated that the Tories may disagree a bit