Saturday 18 November 2017

Northern Light

The BBC will not report 120,000 deaths due to the Government's austerity measures, as reported in the British Medical Journal. Nor will it report the Prime Minister's husbands links to a tax haven. But remember, RT is the problem. Of course it is.

The real problem with RT is that it allows the real Left, and indeed the anti-neoliberal and anti-war Right, on the air. The BBC has not given the Left a regular gig since Diane Abbott departed This Week seven years ago. In the meantime, the Labour Left has become one of the principal political forces in the country. But you would never guess it.

The Daily Politics and The Sunday Politics routinely feature only Conservative supporters "balancing" each other. There, on Question Time, and on Any Questions?, a rare Corbyn supporter has to be "balanced" by a figure from the infinitesimal Labour faction of irreconcilable Corbyn-haters, even though such people barely exist outside the Palace of Westminster or the official media.

Notice that Conservatives on Newsnight, or the Today programme, or anything else, are asked about personality politics, about potential Leadership plots and what have you. But their figures are never challenged. It is assumed that everyone trusts them implicitly on the numbers. Not so, Labour representatives, or at least Corbyn-supporting Labour representatives.

The BBC that will not report the British Medical Journal gives absolutely credibility to Guido Fawkes, most recently in its campaign against Emma Dent Coad in order to silence her questions about Grenfell Tower. Someone needs to look into the crossover of staff between Guido Fawkes and the BBC.

But the SNP's Twitter army is rattled today. Even in Scotland now, the Left no longer has "nowhere else to go" meaning that it has to vote for a party with its heartlands in areas that always voted Conservative until it came along, pursuing right-wing policies yet somehow "not the Tories", who are themselves on the way back up.

The SNP is, in fact, losing in all three directions. It will now be made to answer for its baleful record on economic inequality and on public services. It will no longer get to set the terms of the debate, independence and nothing else, while pursuing the Conservative economics of its fundamentally and previously Conservative voters.

As of today, that is all over. There always was a Tartan Tory market for the SNP, and there always will be. Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson can fight over the same voters, like the old days. But Richard Leonard will have the rest. The majority. Everyone knows it.

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