Posted in Media

The Audacity of Osborne

I hear tell of George Osborne applying for the Evening Standard vacancy only after other people came to him for advice on their applications. What a charmer. Still, his landing the editorship of London’s biggest free sheet is as shocking as it is audacious. How is it someone barely able to string a sentence together, let alone lacking journalistic experience of any kind, can simply drop into and run one of the country’s biggest titles, and carry on doing another five jobs, including the nominally full-time role of representing the good people of Tatton?

Connections, of course. Standard proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev said “I am proud to have an editor of such substance, who reinforces The Standard’s standing and influence in London and whose political viewpoint – socially liberal and economically pragmatic – closely matches that of many of our readers”. Lebedev is the son of an oligarch who got stinking rich thanks to the plundering of Russian industry after the fall of the USSR, and has basically spent his entire life swanning around the jet set and organising parties for celebrities and other chums in London. Continue reading →

Statement on my BBC Radio 4 interview

Lunch with

Yesterday, the BBC aired an interview with me as part of its occasional “At lunch with…” series. The full episode was 18 minutes long and a shorter version appeared on the PM program on Radio 4.

In the interview, I said that under the New Labour project, we alienated millions of our core voters, who have gone over to other parties or to not voting. I then said that Jeremy Corbyn could win them back. This statement has been presented by some as criticism of Jeremy by saying he could, rather than has already, won back these voters. My comments were not a criticism but a statement of how important Jeremy’s leadership is to the party. He can win back these lost voters, and we are on a path to do so but we are not complacent about the task ahead. Continue reading →

‘Genius of the modern world’ or hackery at the BBC?

 

Karl Marx in 1861

Karl Marx in 1861

A new BBC Channel Four series on Genius of the modern world was launched on Thursday 16th June. The series is  to deal with Marx, Nietzsche and Freud – one 60 minute programme for each. The presenter of the programmes is historian Bettany Hughes (BH). In the opening passages BH says that her three geniuses “still shape how we make sense of our lives today”. This first programme is on Marx. (Programme transcript.)

Before getting into any detail we encounter the first warning notice: “Marxist ideology claimed to be liberating but led to dreadful suffering and brought superpowers to the brink of Armageddon”. This is already enough to make the viewer think that if Marx was a genius he was probably one of the mad variety. Continue reading →

Labour would have done better without a campaign to undermine Jeremy

Jeremy Corbyn, in the cross hairsHow many successful elections has Jeremy Corbyn got to preside over before his critics concede he may have something going for him? And when are they going to run out of excuses to explain away his results?

Last summer, as people flocked to join his campaign in their tens of thousands, packing out his meetings and mobbing him in the streets, I was repeatedly told that he was unelectable and would be a disaster as leader. This was after we were told he couldn’t get on the ballot paper and were then told he couldn’t win even if he did get on the ballot paper.

When the Oldham by-election was announced, political pundits and irreconcilable Blairite MPs were united in their prophecies of doom — Labour would do badly under “toxic” Corbyn and might well lose the seat. When we increased our share of the vote, we were told that there was a good local candidate (true) who had won “in spite” of Jeremy. Continue reading →

The ridiculous red-baiting of Sadiq Khan

Red KhanThe news that London Labour activists are working their butts off to secure a victory for Labour’s candidate in the London mayoral elections, on the grounds that Labour electoral success is good news for the leader of the Labour Party, is hardly the stuff of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism.

Yet such is the substance of a recent front page splash in the London Standard, published online under the somewhat lurid headline of ‘Revealed: Hard-Left plot to back Sadiq Khan in bid to strengthen Corbyn’.

In what is breathlessly described as ‘a setback to the Tooting MP’ that ‘damage[s] Sadiq’, the Standard ‘can reveal that leaders of the controversial Momentum group told activists to support the Labour candidate’. How very dare they! I’ll have words with that Lansman fella next time I bump into him, you see if I don’t. Continue reading →