Tag Archives: press

How could Johnson have become Prime Minister? | Mainly Macro

The Johnson ministry in a nutshell: and he was helped all the way by a right-wing press. Were he and they suppressing dissenting voices on the social media?

Boris Johnson is unhappy.

Apparently he thinks the Covid Inquiry has turned into a witch-hunt against him, because it is demonstrating that – as Professor Simon Wren-Lewis states in his latest Mainly Macro column – he was “hopeless and harmful” and “the combination of refusing to delegate and being completely indecisive was a disaster”.

Prof Wren-Lewis goes on to ask the relevant question, which is: how was Johnson allowed to get into a position where he could do so much harm?

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His answer is that the right-wing press put him there:

Johnson’s premiership was the point at which the right wing press gained maximum influence. They knew Johnson would give them that, which is the main reason they boosted his career for so long. Prime Minister Johnson was in good part the result of a few press barons having immense power with little responsibility. The same press that was critical in giving us Brexit was also critical in giving us such a hopeless Prime Minister, and it was their influence that helped delay lockdowns leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

In any assessment of how our political system could have allowed someone like Boris Johnson to become Prime Minister, the role of the right wing press should play a prominent part.

That arm of the media did indeed have immense power to put Johnson in his place. While I disagree with him about the drawbacks of Jeremy Corbyn’s period as Labour leader (we now know the anti-Semitism “crisis” was manufactured by bad-faith actors, purely to keep transformative change for the better out of the corridors of power), Prof Wren-Lewis is right that the incessant concentration on Corbyn, coupled with flag-waving, tub-thumping trumpeting of Brexit (which has proved worse than useless in practice) put Johnson in charge during the Covid crisis:

[Corbyn] was preferable to Johnson… for two clear reasons. The first is that some form of hard Brexit was inevitable under a Johnson administration, but far from inevitable under a government led by Corbyn. The second was that there is no way Corbyn would have ever suggested that Covid was nature’s way of dealing with old people. Tens of thousands less people would have died if he had been PM. Now perhaps Corbyn would have done worse things than Johnson, outweighing the economic costs of hard Brexit and tens of thousands of UK lives lost to Covid indecision, but I have yet to hear any suggestions of what that might be that are at all convincing.

In months before the election the media … spent plenty of time discussing Corbyn’s mistakes, particularly over the issue of antisemitism, but much less time talking about Johnson’s record, racist comments and past failures. If there were extensive discussions about how illegally proroguing parliament signalled an authoritarian style and a threat to parliamentary sovereignty I missed it. I also missed the constant questioning of whether you could trust someone who in the past had made stories up and had lost two jobs through lying.

The analysis Prof Wren-Lewis was missing was available – on the left-wing, social media. This Site published multiple articles on the subject.

Who read them?

All right, put your hands down; you were in a minority then and there are fewer of you now.

The reason there are fewer of you reading This Site now is the purpose of this article.

Prof Wren-Lewis states that the right-wing press has grown to be hugely influential. It is possible that this influence has extended to a point where it is able to suppress opposing voices, by influencing the platforms through which we reach our audience.

And it is possible that the Tory government that won a landslide victory with the help of these press barons has been helping out.

That would be political interference with free speech and free discourse, which is, at the very least, a violation of our human rights.

It makes sense, doesn’t it?

If a right-wing regime, together with its helpers in the right-wing media, wanted to install a complete liability as a national leader, it would do all it could to stifle voices of reason, wouldn’t it?

I have a Freedom Of Information request lodged with the government at the moment, on this very subject.

What do you think the response will be?

Source: mainly macro: How could Johnson have become Prime Minister?


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Here’s the reason the Tory fuss over fake Rishi Sunak ‘pint’ pic is hilarious

Not quite right: this image has been photoshopped to make it seem the pint of ‘Black Dub’ was badly-poured by Tory leader Rishi Sunak. The giveaway should have been the look in the eyes of the woman behind him, which is comedy – as is the response of the Conservative Party that once re-modelled its entire press office to convey lies about a previous party leader.

When Labour MP Karl Turner tweeted (can we still use that word, now that platform has been reduced to a letter ‘X’?) an image of Rishi Sunak, apparently having poured a pint of real ale very badly, handing it across a bar – to apparent shock from a woman behind him – who could have predicted the squeal of outrage from Conservative Central HQ?

It seems the image is a fake and the Tories were scandalised that somebody had used it to lie about their leader.

Who knew that the only people now permitted to lie about their leader are the Tories themselves?

What?

That’s not how it is?

But, but, but… the Tories do lie about their leaders – all the time! If you don’t recall, perhaps these words will jog your memory: “Factcheck UK.”

I wrote about this at the time – which was during the 2019 general election campaign.

During a televised leader debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on ITV, CCHQ’s press office spontaneously re-branded itself as “Factcheck UK” in order to whitewash anything Johnson said, in the hope that the voting public would be gullible enough to believe it.

Very few people were – as I reported:

The Conservative Party seems to be getting desperate.

Its press office resorted to the dirty trick of pretending to be a ‘fact check’ organisation during the ITV leaders’ debate – presumably so it could tweet a (false) claim that Boris Johnson won the confrontation.

Well, that didn’t work!

Not only did people take extreme offence at the pretense…

… but they also decided to have their own laugh at the Tories’ expense.

Take a look at some of these examples:

 

Way to go, Tories. Not only did your man mess up his big TV appearance…

But you’ve also ensured that nobody will believe another word to come out of your publicity machine.

And now they’ve just reminded us that they lie, constantly and compulsively.

That’s probably not a good idea when they’re trying to win the public debate over global warming.


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Press regulator urged to act after continued failings in Jewish Chronicle reports

The press regulator has been – again – asked to launch a standards investigation over continued “serious and systemic” editorial problems causing “egregious” malpractice at the Jewish Chronicle.

IPSO has been contacted by 15 victims of inaccurate reporting by the newspaper – including This Writer – after eight further breaches of the editors’ code of conduct were made by the Jewish Chronicle following the regulator’s decision not to launch a standards investigation over an initial 33 such breaches and four admissions of libel.

In our letter, which is also signed by such famously-wronged individuals as Jo Bird, Audrey White and Marc Wadsworth, we say: “This was in our view a shocking level of non-compliance, equivalent to one breach in every four issues published over the period, yet the IPSO Board considered two training sessions to be sufficient remedy. For context, this would be the equivalent of a daily newspaper breaching the Code 91 times in one year.

“We found the decision of the IPSO board not to order such an investigation in December 2021 disappointing and based on spurious reasoning.

“Your letter of 23 December 2021 explained that your refusal was in part because of a ‘change of ownership’ in 2020, and ‘new editorial leadership’ in 2021. As you are no doubt aware, that change of ownership appears to have been driven by financial losses largely occasioned by libel payouts resulting from poor journalism. The change of editor in fact took place when its editor of 13 years resigned only 72 hours before IPSO’s meeting to discuss this issue on 14 December 2021.

“We read in the recent review of IPSO by Sir Bill Jeffrey that, in February of this year, IPSO declared that ‘sufficient improvements had occurred in both complaints handling and editorial standards to allow the cessation of active monitoring of standards’ at the Jewish Chronicle. This conclusion is surprising to us given that, between December 2021 and the publication of that report, IPSO had upheld three further complaints against the Jewish Chronicle and
the paper had also (to our knowledge) been obliged to take down one further article.

“Only two months after the IPSO board decided to take no further action against the Jewish Chronicle, and three weeks before the publication of Sir Bill Jeffrey’s report, yet another complaint against that publication was upheld, involving three separate breaches of the code of conduct and a finding that it had behaved unacceptably.

“To quote paragraph 19 of that adjudication: ‘The committee expressed significant concerns about the newspaper’s conduct prior to the publication and the absence of a published apology as part of the remedial action which had been taken. The committee considered that the publication’s conduct was unacceptable, and their concerns were drawn to the attention of IPSO’s standards department.’”

We wrote: “We hope that IPSO will now recognise that the mere provision of training failed to resolve the serious and systemic journalistic and editorial problems at the Jewish Chronicle. Sir Bill Jeffrey wrote that an IPSO standards investigation is only likely to happen if malpractice is egregious and comes out of the blue or if ‘IPSO conclude that their engagement is getting nowhere and a stronger response is needed’. It is surely obvious now that IPSO is getting nowhere with the Jewish Chronicle and that a stronger response is needed.

“The Jewish Chronicle shows no signs whatsoever of improvement. Every one of the post-2021 adjudications includes reference to one or more of ‘significant inaccuracy’, ‘significantly misleading’ reporting, and ‘unacceptable’ conduct. If this continuing record of journalistic failure and malpractice does not amount to a ‘serious and systemic’ breach of IPSO’s code of conduct, we would welcome your comments and clear explanation of what exactly would be required to amount to such a breach.

“We urge you to recommend a standards investigation to your board, and to do so urgently – in weeks rather than months – before more bad journalism is published, more falsehoods are disseminated among readers and more harm is done to innocent people.”

My upheld complaint that the Jewish Chronicle had falsely stated that I had made “antisemitic” comments is the first item on the list of that organisation’s breaches.

A series of articles against Audrey White had falsely alleged that she had lied in order to be readmitted to the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, after having been expelled in the 1980s (all untrue); that she had received multiple warnings about bullying other party members (she had not); that she had falsely claimed to have complained to the police about a Labour councillor and a disabled pensioner (it was not a false claim); and that she had been a member of the Socialist Party (she had not).

The newspaper had to publish an apology to Marc Wadsworth after, in its own words, “We reported that Marc Wadsworth had spoken at the launch event for the ‘Labour in Exile Network’ (LIEN), a group that aimed to discover the addresses of Jewish Labour activists to “take care” of them, and that he was thereby complicit in a conspiracy to intimidate, threaten or harass Jewish activists into silence. We also suggested that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that such activities were criminal.” None of this was true.

It also had to publish a correction after stating that Jo Bird’s Labour membership had been suspended for a third time.

The letter has been sent to Lord Faulks, IPSO’s current chairman, and we await his response.


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Failed health sec and cheating husband Matt Hancock loses IPSO complaint

Matt Hancock: this may have been the look on his face when he received the adjudication.

A failed health sec and cheating husband who broke lockdown rules he wrote and helped enrich his mates via a VIP PPE lane has lost in a bid to have that description ruled inaccurate.

Matt Hancock complained to press regulator IPSO over several articles published by the Daily Mirror.

They’re very festive, so This Writer will just repeat them here in full (because I can):

Hancock complained over the following pieces:

  • “No stranger to ridicule or reinvention” (2 November 2022)
  • “Shameful record of blunders” (2 November 2022)
  • “He’s no jungle hero… lying Hancock threw us all to the wolves” (11 November 2022)
  • “SOLIDARITY IS EMOTIONAL” (3 December 2022)

The articles included allegations that Hancock:

  • “presided over PPE contracts being handed out to acquaintances of ministers and officials, including his ex-pub landlord” during the Covid-19 pandemic
  • “broke ministerial code by failing to declare he held shares in a family firm that won an NHS contract”
  • was “a failed health secretary and cheating husband who broke the lockdown rules he wrote, doubled down on the lies he told, helped enrich his mates via the infamous VIP PPE lane, and couldn’t resist monetising the infamy he acquired as a result of his ineptitude at managing the pandemic”.

The complaints under Clause 1 of the Editors’ Code (accuracy) were all rejected.

The decision means we’re all free to use the same language about Hancock, and some have beaten This Writer to it:

All right, then!


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On This Date 2020: Is EHRC too busy scrabbling for anti-Semitism in Labour to bother with obvious Tory Islamophobia?

Islamophobia: the creator of this image thought it was bad enough in the Tories under Theresa May. Now, with racist Boris Johnson in charge, who knows how far the rot has gone?

How long has the Equalities and Human Rights Commission been looking for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party now? A year?

Either it is very well hidden – which would be odd, considering the number of (admittedly mostly false) claims made against the party – or the EHRC is determined not to stop until it has managed to concoct a convincing case.

It doesn’t fill one with confidence in that organisation.

And now we see that the EHRC is trying to squirm out of handling 300 documented cases of Islamophobia – in the Conservative Party.

Does anybody else smell a rat?

According to the Mirror, the dossier handed to the EHRC – by the Muslim Council of Britain – contains information about 16 Conservative MPs, one MEP, nine election candidates and 183 party members.

That’s 209 people, so presumably some are multiple offenders. I wonder if Boris Johnson is listed among them?

The allegations include:

  • A former councillor calling for “unconditional surrender” by Muslims, who they label “brutes who beat, kill and maim young women”;

  • A local party association chair who called for Muslims to be banned;

  • A member who called for Muslims to be thrown from bridges;

  • Another member who called for the forcible sterilisation of Muslims.

The MCB also condemns the Conservative Party’s failure to suspend MP Daniel Kawczynski after he spoke at an event alongside far-right leaders, and for failing to take action on MP Karl McCartney, who shared Islamophobic and anti-Semitic social media content by Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins.

Secretary General Harun Khan said the EHRC had failed to give any response to the MCB’s first formal complaint in May 2019, and says it was ‘extraordinary’ that the watchdog had taken no action in the 10 months since.

“There is no doubt that the Conservative party has an Islamophobia crisis: it is institutional, systemic and widespread” he said,

“The party’s response has been one of denial, dismissal and deceit – this results in clear discrimination against Muslims because of their religion”

The EHRC says it is waiting for information about a promised internal inquiry by the Conservative Party, which it is claiming will be “independent” even though it is to be carried out within the party structure.

This Writer can only wish them good luck with that. We’re all also awaiting publication of the report on Russian influence on the Conservative government, and on Boris Johnson’s relationship with Jennifer Arcuri.

Wise heads think it won’t just be a cold day in Hell, but their subjects may actually have taken up residence there before these reports are published.

Former Tory-supporting columnist Peter Oborne thinks – well, see for yourself:

In his article, he wrote:

The problem stretches from the lowest ranks of the Tory party to the very top. There is a massive problem with Islamophobic bigotry among Tory grassroots, where the MCB has provided a list of more than 100 cases.

Party members, councillors and officials have repeatedly made disgusting statements about Muslims, calling for them to leave the country, making provocative insults about the Prophet Muhammad and peddling malicious lies.

This should not come as any surprise to anyone, since poll results published by the anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate last year showed that more than half of Conservative members thought Islam was “generally a threat to the British way of life”.

I’ve written before about Bob Blackman, the Conservative MP for Harrow East, who shared an anti-Muslim post by Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League; hosted the anti-Muslim Tapan Ghosh, the right-wing Hindu nationalist; and shared far-right and Islamophobic content on Facebook.

Anti-Muslim bigotry is not a barrier to promotion. Nadine Dorries, who also shared a tweet by Robinson, is now a health minister. This is no surprise, given that Johnson himself has a long record of making anti-Muslim remarks.

Tellingly, Johnson is surrounded by Islamophobes. Dominic Cummings, his most senior advisor, reportedly had overall responsibility for The Spectator website in 2006, according to Stuart Reid, the magazine’s acting editor at the time, when a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban was posted on the site.

One of Johnson’s up-and-coming advisors is Chloe Westley. She praised Anne Marie Waters, leader of the anti-Islam party For Britain, as a “hero”, even though Waters has called Islam “evil” and also has links to Robinson.

But he made a very important point: the UK’s mass media are ignoring this story:

I could find nothing at all about the MCB report in the Financial Times or Daily Telegraph. There were seven paragraphs on page 16 of the Times and 11 paragraphs on page 7 of the Guardian. Nothing in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, or the Sun.

Most British newspapers are as Islamophobic as the Conservative Party itself, and in some cases, more so. This means they are effectively giving Johnson and his senior advisers and ministers a free pass to reshape the Tory party as a far-right, populist organisation of the type we already know too well on continental Europe.

It shows how the media have been manipulating your opinions and – by proxy – the actions of organisations like the EHRC.

The papers kicked up a huge fuss about the imaginary crisis of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party (where I doubt if even 200 genuine cases have been found among a membership of more than half a million in the past four years).

But their silence over 300 evidenced cases of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, which is much smaller than Labour, means few people know about it and any outcry is therefore minimised.

So the EHRC can say there’s no real demand for it to investigate, despite the fact that, in real terms, it is a bigger issue.

Source: EHRC Condemned For ‘Failure’ To Act On Tory Islamophobia

Start the week with a laugh: here’s Liv Struss announcing her new Chancellor

It’s a new week, so let’s start by reminding Liz Truss of the worst moments of the last one – like her train crash press conference announcing that she had sacked Kwasi Kwarteng and was bringing in Germy Hunt as her new Chancellor:

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Truss press conference: she reverses Corporation Tax cut and refuses to apologise

Liz Truss says she wants growth but went too far in her mini-budget.

She’ll keep the increase in Corporation Tax now, raising an extra £18 billion per year.

She’s asked former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to become Chancellor (so he’ll do as much damage to the Treasury as he did to the NHS).

She’s keeping the energy price “guarantee” (note: no longer a cap).

“This is difficult but we will get through this storm,” she says – not for a moment admitting that she is responsible for it.

She goes to questions – and is immediately asked why she has junked the Corporation Tax cut on which she was elected Tory leader. She evades answering.

Second question: the 45p tax cut was her idea, so was the Corporation Tax cut. But Kwarteng had to go. Why does she have to stay? She evades answering.

Third question: what credibility does she have to continue governing? She puts it all on Jeremy Hunt, the new Chancellor, and says they have to “deliver the mission in a different way”.

Fourth question: will she apologise to her party for having “totally trashed” its “reputation for economic competence”. She evades answering.

And she leaves. As she goes, a voice can be heard very clearly asking…

“Aren’t you going to say sorry?”

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Kwarteng is OUT as Chancellor – as Truss scrabbles to save her own political skin?

They used to say a week was a long time in politics; now it’s down to just half an hour.

When I started writing this article, it was about the press conference Liz Truss has announced, in which she is likely to reverse several – or all – elements of the disastrous ‘fiscal event’ of September 23.

But this has been superceded already – with the announcement that Kwasi Kwarteng has become the UK’s second shortest-serving Chancellor, being out after only 38 days in the job.

As I write this, it isn’t clear whether he has been asked to resign or sacked outright.

Truss herself didn’t have many options after she painted herself into a corner during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.

She had previously said she would cut taxes for the already-obscenely rich. This meant she would have to finance the change with more borrowing – or cut public services.

But at PMQs on Wednesday, she said she would not be borrowing – nor would there be any public service reductions.

That left Truss with nowhere to go – and everyone knew it.

Kwarteng himself has been in Washington DC for a meeting with the IMF (some have speculated that he went there cap-in-hand, as Denis Healey did, back in the 1970s) – but has been recalled to London.

This triggered speculation that he is to be asked to resign, as Priti Patel was after it was discovered that she had been trying to run her own personal foreign policy alongside the Israeli government while acting as International Trade Secretary.

And now he’s gone:

Apparently The Times is suggesting Jeremy Hunt could be the next Chancellor.

What next?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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The hypocrisy of the headlines in your lovable Tory papers

This clip speaks for itself.

Chunky Mark has been a laughing legend for years. His point about the hypocrisy of the Tory media’s headlines is well-made, I think.

Some of you may dislike his comments about certain Royals.

Here’s the clip:

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Nazanin’s calm criticism makes nonsense of boasts by Johnson and his government

Home at last: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has, quietly and with dignity, made nonsense of claims by Boris Johnson and his government that they worked tirelessly to free her.

A newspaper reporter on the BBC’s Politics Live tried to say current foreign secretary Liz Truss was to be praised for achieving the release, but we all know her actions were not even slightly motivated by concern for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Truss paid a £400 million debt the UK owed Iran in the hope that it would win a deal for cheap fossil fuels to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis her government has forced on its fellow citizens.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s calm comments on the way she was mistreated by UK foreign secretaries – including Truss and current prime minister Boris Johnson – should act like daggers in the heart of the Tory government:

Tory voters: take note – if you were in trouble, a Tory government would treat you no better.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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The Livingstone Presumption is now available
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The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
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