Tag Archives: Peston

The chairman of NatWest understands the problems facing the UK – why can’t Rishi Sunak?

Rishi Sunak: the economy is beyond the understanding of this former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now the UK’s prime minister.

This Writer is guilty of terrible omissions in my political viewing habits; I keep forgetting Robert Peston’s interview show.

This week, he was talking to Howard Davies, chairman of NatWest, along with Labour’s John McDonnell and Ruth Davidson of the Conservatives, and it was Mr Davies who proved most interesting.

He laid into former PM Liz Truss, who has claimed she was brought down by a mythical “left-wing establishment”:

His words were supported by Mr McDonnell, who explained how he had planned for a future Labour government in 2017 and 2019 by liaising with the relevant economic movers and shakers in order to be sure that everybody knew what he was planning. He considered Truss’s failure to prepare as “incompetent”:

Mr Davies also described the economic levers that he believed were tipping the UK into recession – including Brexit, despite Tory claims to the contrary:

And he said although the recession was likely to be shallow, it would be hard to bring it to an end because the government has no plans to do so:

This is unsurprising. If a government refuses to accept the reasons for recession (like Brexit), then it is unlikely to be able to plan a successful way out.

But that leaves the question: if Howard Davies can recognise the problems, why can’t Rishi Sunak?

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Does anybody STILL believe Labour’s lies about Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism?

Laughter: it’s the only sane response left to the wild nonsense spouted by Liz Kendall and the rest of the Starmer-Labour mob.

ITV’s Robert Peston opened a can of worms when he invited Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall onto his TV show.

Mr Corbyn has been treated disgracefully by the Labour Party, having been suspended from its Parliamentary membership by current leader Keir Starmer on the basis of a flimsy falsehood about anti-Semitism. Kendall is a senior member of Starmer’s team, who promotes that falsehood.

You can hear her doing it in this clip:

Kendall had the lion’s share of attention there, so let’s have a balancing view (look out for the strong language):

For those of you who have a milder disposition:

Let’s have a think about what she was saying. Failure to apologise? What’s this then?

Note that Mr Corbyn said he accepted EHRC report, and the Forde Report showed the scale of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was as Corbyn said:

Additionally:

She’s proud that Starmer has changed Labour. But what did she mean by “firm action”? Well…

“The “firm action” @Keir_Starmer has taken – which Liz Kendal is so proud about – is to expel dozens of left-wing Jews from @UKLabour, making it more antisemitic than it ever was with Jeremy Corbyn as leader,” tweeted “Oliver”.

Why did she talk about the Armed Forces and pride in the UK? ‘George SUROS Regime’ tweeted: “Quite frankly I am amazed that Jeremy Corbyn would appear on this tv show when Peston himself would be aware that Corbyn has apologised time and time again. Liz Kendall suddenly shifting the goalposts from antisemitism to “armed forces” was an incredibly dumb move.”

And why did she twist his words, trying to make it seem as though he’d said that the evil of anti-Semitism was exaggerated?

Mr Corbyn has won praise for his dignified response to Kendall’s tirade:

And there has been a huge backlash against Kendall online:

“People like her are the reason I didn’t vote before Jeremy Corbyn became leader, and why I won’t vote for them now,” tweeted Andrew Stephen. “Utterly horrendous and extremely unpleasant individual who’s personality won’t allow her to give a flying duck about anyone but herself.”

‘Sharon’ tweeted: “One duplicitous lady. The fact that Jeremy Corbyn still bothers them, shows that they know full well what they did was dishonest and has led to all this turmoil we are now facing.”

(For the sake of balance, I should point out that some have tweeted in support of Kendall.)

But why bring back this old debate at all? It is months since the Forde Report confirmed that factionalism within Labour had killed the party’s chance of winning an election with Jeremy Corbyn as leader, and anti-Semitism was one of the sticks used to beat him at that time. There’s no current news that justifies bringing this back.

So is it just a ‘dead cat’ – a distraction to take attention away from other news?

Well, there’s this…

… and this…

… and this:

It’s a flawed strategy, if the aim is to paint Jeremy Corbyn and socialists as villains. Remember: he was right about many of the Tory-created crises facing the UK now.

For example, the tweet by Dan Hodges, below, hasn’t aged well:

And just because he’s been booted off the Labour benches by Starmer and his bullies, that doesn’t mean Mr Corbyn has gone quiet. You can see what he’s doing in a few online shows coming up soon:

What do you think? A dead cat? Or is there more behind this? Perhaps there’s something coming that we’re yet to discover?

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The Castex letter DIDN’T say the UK should be punished. Kuenssberg was WRONG

Laura Kuenssberg: by publicising an apparent mistranslation of a letter by the French Prime Minister, she has caused a major international political row. Can she even read French?

The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, misrepresented a letter on the UK/EU fishing row by French Prime Minister Jean Castex – apparently to stoke international tensions on the eve of the G20 and COP26 summits.

The UK and France are sabre-rattling over rights to fish in each other’s waters, after the UK prohibited some French trawlers over a technicality.

Kuenssberg aggravated the row by publicising a letter from Castex to European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen, claiming it said the EU needed to demonstrate that there was “more damage to leaving the EU than remaining there”.

This is based on a translation publicised by Alex Wickham of Politico. In tweets, he claimed the letter said:

“It is indispensable to demonstrate to European public opinion that more damage is suffered by leaving the EU than by remaining.”

The implication is that the EU should actively punish the UK.

An alternative translation by Edwin Hayward states the following:

“The UK’s uncooperative stance today threatens to cause great harm not only to fishermen, especially the French, but also to them [European] Union as it sets a precedent for the future and challenges our credibility and our ability to enforce our rights in relation to the international commitments signed by the union.

“It therefore seems necessary for the European Union to show its full determination to achieve full respect for the Agreement by the United Kingdom and to exercise its rights in a firm, cohesive and proportionate manner using the levers at its disposal.

“It is important to make it clear to European public opinion that respect for commitment is non-negotiable and that leaving the union does more harm than staying there.

“If a satisfactory solution is not found in this context, the European Union must apply Article 506 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and take corrective measures proportionate to the economic and social damage that [violations] will cause.”

That makes it a little different, once it’s put into context!

As Hayward states in his own article,

It should be immediately clear from the above text that there is no active intent to punish the UK. All the French want to do is to highlight the problems that Brexit has been causing — they are not trying to inflict new ones on us.

And people know:

(He means “…can’t be as advantageous as being IN” of course.)

Robert Peston said in his tweet that Boris Johnson has swallowed the Wickham translation and is “visibly angry” about the letter. But is he?

If Johnson is as well-educated as he’s supposed to be (Eton and Oxford) then it is entirely possible that he can read French for himself and knows exactly what the letter said. If so, then he is simply trying to manipulate a situation created by reporters (who probably can’t – with apologies to Kuenssberg and Peston if they turn out to be fluent, but that just implies that they know they’re peddling falsehoods and don’t care either).

This Writer, as a journalist and editor of nearly 28 years’ standing, agrees with Marcus Chown, below:

Indeed. Or indeed any journalist-training organisation such as the one that taught me (the National Council for the Training of Journalists). Where did Peston and Kuenssberg get their qualifications?

Actually, let’s check.

Kuenssberg, it seems, has no qualification as a journalist. She studied History at the University of Edinburgh, then spent a year studying (but the subject is not clarified) at Georgetown University in Washington DC, where she interned at the NBC News political programme. Returning to the UK, she eventually joined the BBC as a trainee journalist – but that doesn’t mean she was doing any training. ‘Trainee’ is just the name applied to a working reporter who hasn’t passed the test to become a Senior Reporter. If she was trained in the States, it was in an American standard of reporting.

Peston’s degree at Oxford was Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He then studied at the Université libre de Bruxelles – but again, it’s not clear what the subject was. He entered journalism via another back door, writing for the Investors Chronicle after being a stockbroker.

Those details aren’t very reassuring!

But it shouldn’t be up to the Kuenssbergs, Pestons, or even the Johnsons of this world to sort out this row. It’s a matter for the French.

All Jean Castex has to do is come out and read the relevant part of his letter, along with a translation into English saying exactly what he intended it to say.

That should end any ambiguity. How about it?

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Why is ROBERT #PESTON announcing the new #BorisJohnson #lockdown2 restrictions?

 Robert Peston: how come he’s announcing new government Covid-19 restrictions in advance?

I thought Peston’s erstwhile sidekick Allegra Stratton was the one who quit to become the Tory government’s full-time spokes-goon.

What’s Peston himself doing, announcing new policies before Boris Johnson?

And didn’t Johnson fall foul of the relevant authorities for announcing policies via his media stooges before giving Parliament a chance to look at them?

Yes he did.

Some people never learn – or perhaps Johnson’s just thumbing his nose at everybody else and Peston is simply the empty vessel he’s using to do it.

Here’s what the ITV political editor has claimed will be announced at 5pm today (October 31). Let’s compare it with what Johnson says:

Schools and universities to remain open?

This won’t make much of a dent in the spread of the virus, then.

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Peston’s client journalism: his fawning tweet about ‘saddened’ Johnson gets short shrift

Johnson and Starmer: political hack Robert Peston managed to get between them during PMQs with an ill-judged remark that has singled him out as a client journalist for the PM.

Sometimes you can tell how a nation feels by the way it reacts to the reporting of the news.

That’s what Robert Peston has been discovering after a particularly ill-advised tweet toadying to Boris Johnson. Here it is:

Johnson wasn’t saddened. He was annoyed that Labour leader Keir Starmer was asking pertinent questions about the failure of the Tory Test and Trace system and was desperate to deflect attention away from that failure.

We all saw it – those of us who were watching Prime Minister’s Questions. And some of us had a few sharp responses:

No – it’s client journalism. Peston was working in Johnson’s favour, trying to make the performing monkey PM look better than he is.

It’s a moment’s work that has been particularly damaging for Peston himself:

And it hasn’t done Johnson any favours either:

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Local lockdown to hit northeast England – but why was it first announced on TV?

Speaking too soon: Robert Jenrick announces restrictions on northeast England, on the Peston TV show.

BBC news has announced – around midday today, September 17 – that the northeast of England will be subjected to stronger Covid-19-related restrictions because of increased infections there. It’s not quite a local lockdown but close.

I knew this last night because Robert Jenrick announced it on television, on Robert Peston’s ITV political chat show.

The only reason I didn’t publish a story straight away was fatigue (I had been awake for around 19 hours on the trot by then) – and also I wanted to know what Commons Spaker Lindsay Hoyle would have to say about this breach of regulations:

Some are saying this is another example of Dominic Cummings-style “government by media”, although I can’t see any advantage for the Tories in doing this.

Who benefits from Jenrick’s announcement, which came just 13 hours (and a bit) before the statement in Parliament?

The people of the northeast? No – the difference in timing still isn’t enough for them to properly prepare, if they need to.

The government? No – this is an admission that a government policy has failed.

Robert Jenrick? No – he was announcing something that nobody wanted and is more likely to be resented for it. In any case, he’s widely considered to be as bent as a nine-bob note (see his record of corruption on planning matters).

Robert Peston benefits, because the announcement was on his show.

But what’s the tactical advantage for the Tories? Are they trying to set up some kind of divide-and-rule rivalry between Peston and Piers Morgan, whose breakfast show can’t get government spokespeople because they’re afraid he’ll rip them to shreds?

That seems pointless because the Tories lose more than they gain, if they get another reprimand from Speaker Hoyle.

Perhaps Jenrick was speaking on his own initiative – a loose cannon, as it were.

If so, let’s hope he shot himself in the foot.

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Peston’s ‘China’ accusation backfires as Labour supporters react with fury

Ill-humoured: Robert Peston.

Look at the state of this, about the Labour conference vote yesterday that supported the leadership’s position on Brexit, rather than changing to support remaining in the European Union:

In his article, Robert Peston states: “The Brexit position of the trade unions was always a red herring, what magicians call misdirection. What mattered was who was in the hall.

“And that was sorted weeks ago though the choice of delegates.

“For spectators like me – who spent 15 years observing the tactics of China’s leaders – all this is quite familiar.

“For passionate Labour Remainers, it’s infuriating.”

This is a lie. Peston was claiming that delegates to the Labour conference were chosen by Jeremy Corbyn to support his position on Brexit, when in fact they are chosen by their fellow constituency party members.

As Richard Seymour states: “This is literally a conspiracy theory about the official opposition being published by a major national broadcaster. They ought to withdraw this.”

And he’s not the only one to react furiously:

So Mr Peston changed tack and decided to suggest he was joking. That didn’t go down well either:

Sadly, the mainstream media seem determined to mislead the public about Labour’s attitude towards Brexit. Consider this, from the BBC’s Norman Smith – and the response:

Labour is now the only mainstream political party that will give all UK electors a voice on the UK’s exit from the European Union.

The Tories will take us out on terms that seem most likely to benefit Boris Johnson’s business partners.

The Liberal Democrats will keep us in, without offering the people a chance to make a decision.

Labour will honour the 2016 referendum by negotiating a new exit deal with the EU, and will bring this deal back to the electorate for a decision, alongside the possibility of remaining in the EU after all.

This is the only way democracy may be honoured in this matter.

Now all we need to do is get rid of Boris Johnson’s attempted dictatorship and bring in a Labour government. Right?

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