Memories are made of this

The BBC continues its long drawn out sneer at those on the political right as John Sergeant on Saturday dismissed Boris (leader of the Out campaign) as a ‘joke’…a joke who won two elections for the Mayor of London in what is essentially a Labour city…not to mention being voted in as an MP.  Some joke.

John Pienaar declared Trump was ‘the problem’ on Sunday  (39 mins) and when told Trump was ‘practical and focussed on the moment’ (and temperamentally much like JFK, Reagan and LBJ…so not the irrational ‘nut job’ the BBC like to portray him as) Pienaar suggested for some reason that ‘you could say the same about a professional assassin’.  Why on earth would you come up with such a comparison unless you were determined to just malign Trump?  Pienaar made sceptical sounds throughout the piece and knew he was doing so as he had to say ‘of course I have no opinion’….before telling us Trump insulted the ‘whole Muslim world’ and that he was ‘the best opponent Clinton could hope for’.   Hmm…apparently Trump leads the polls for the Presidency….so perhaps Pienaar is wrong….just as he was about Miliband ‘leading the political narrative’...

It’s not the headline, and it takes 219 words to get there, but a new Washington Post poll on the presidential race reveals that Republican Donald Trump leads Democrat Hillary Clinton among registered voters 46 percent to 44 percent.

Earlier in the week on the Today programme we had Mishal Husain urging the young voters to get out and vote telling us they will be an important influence in the EU referendum…being more likely to vote to stay in the EU.. she then mentioned the ex-pats who have fled the UK for sunnier climes and who are also likely to vote to stay, given the chance, to stay in the EU…though Husain hesitated and didn’t admit that…as it might seem too much like a pro-EU broadcast….just as the government launches its own campaign to get the same demographic to vote….knowing they are likely to be pro-EU.

Funnily enough the BBC is giving a lot of airtime to Labour man Eddie Izzard who is right now touring the country to get the young to vote…for the EU.  Izzard was on Marr and on Pienaar’s politics…so a double dose of him on Sunday…and no doubt elsewhere on the BBC as well.  Pienaar made no challenge to many of his claims about the benefits of the EU nor his claim that the Out campaign was extremist, racist and based on the hatred of immigrants.

Izzard describes himself as a radical moderate who seems to want a dictatorship…once a leader is elected he must be obeyed and his message strictly adhered to without debate.  Oddly this ‘new politician’ who wants to break the mould speaks the speak and comes up with the usual dodges when challenged..and to be fair to Pienaar he at least questioned Izzard’s one-man state.

Back to John Sergeant and it is interesting to see how fact and political commentator part company as he describes his part in Margaret Thatcher’s downfall.  On Saturday he related his dinner party tale (1min 50) of how Thatcher made him look a fool…telling us that he didn’t hear Peter Sissons’ warning that Thatcher was behind him…but looking at the video Sergeant has already turned around to see her approaching before we hear the warning from Sissons.  Sergeant tells us that the group coming towards him were shouting ‘where is the microphone’ and that they were pushing and shoving and that Bernard Ingham hit him.  Sergeant was baffled he tells us…because he had the microphone, despite the fact that there were the serried ranks of the world’s Press next to him and that he wanted a BBC exclusive.  He claimed that Thatcher knew nothing of the plan to talk to all the journalists…implying that there was plan to talk solely to him….evidence of that?  None.  He tells us Thatcher said she’d go on to the second ballot and then she ‘swept out’.

Well it’s a good dinner party story but as with most such stories it has been embellished and made more exciting in the telling over the years with Sergeant at the centre of things.  The truth is somewhat different as the video actually shows.  Sergeant knew Thatcher was coming out before Sissons warned him, there was no shouting. Ingham did ask ‘where is the microphone’ because there was an ‘official’ microphone on a stand that Thatcher was meant to speak into.  An official did gently move Sergeant aside but only because Sergeant was in the way of that microphone being positioned and Ingham did not ‘hit’ Sergeant merely moving his arm holding his microphone in the way of the official microphone.  Thatcher was quite amiable and did not make a ‘terse’ statement that she would take part in a second ballot before ‘sweeping out‘…she remained to answer several questions….there was no ‘fighting’ as Sergeant suggests.  All in all a very different and less exciting story than the one spun by Sergeant…see for yourself (3:10)…