I do not listen to BBC news anymore. It is almost impossible to listen Sky News as well, but periodically they let a tiny amount of criticism of this government and its policies to sneak in. So, when the government passes something which is in violation of the law and, for that matter, a Supreme Court decision (like declaring Rwanda is a “safe” country to send “illegal” migrants to when we accept asylum seekers from Rwanda), or yet another law which gives Police (and they are the representatives of the State on the ground) and the Home Office secretary more broad powers of policing free speech at protests or controlling demonstrations (there have been several acts passed recently trying to limit demonstrations or yet another attack on the rights of unions), they will bring on someone from Liberty to speak about Human Rights or the Trade Union Congress to speak about attacks on Employment Rights. A lot of this has to do with the Tory agenda of eliminating as much of European Human Rights law as possible; there are so many laws that exist due to our previous membership of the EU that even they gave up trying to eliminate the influence of the EU at this point.
If I want something without this strong level of bias in reporting, I often switch to online news like AP or Reuters who report the story; that does not mean it is unbiased, just that the slants of various political parties are a bit less apparent; they still have their own biases. If you look at articles and topics chosen out of everything that is going on in this world, the fact is that stories themselves reflect what the media thinks is important. It may not be, but reporting has a perspective and we cannot pretend it doesn’t exist (honestly, it becomes difficult to ignore).
News Stories over the past two days as examples
What impressed me this morning was there was Tory MP Alicia Kearns (chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee) who was speaking of a “grave threat” coming from China that was trying to undermine “our” democracy. It seems that the UK government will now bring in legislation against Chinese cyber-attacks that are supposedly threatening democratic elections and is bringing together well-known anti-Chinese Tory MPs to deal with this threat to democracy as 43 individuals including MPs and Lords were cyber attacked. Maybe it is my cynicism, but there are a lot of threats to British democracy; gerrymandering, an overarching executive, attacks on civil rights, etc. This is an interesting distraction, we know there are quite real attacks on the right to protest, constraints on our freedom of speech, virulent attacks on trans people and their threat to English civilisation, disabled people and single mothers and their “destruction” of our economy; let’s be real, the threat to British democracy is not overseas, but is instead running the country.
The primary news story yesterday was that the poor Princess of Wales has cancer which is awful, but it doubly awful that she felt obliged to announce this in public. Cancer is bad enough and the fact that she had to share this diagnosis with the world where her video was played over and over again on the news must have felt like a continuing violation. I normally ignore news about the royal family; but truly felt sympathy with her; she is a young woman with a young family and yes, she has access to better health care than the rest of us, but I feel sorry for her because she is a human being like all of us.
The second biggest story which again was another call to the hard and far-right to get outraged and get lots of air time (yes, some of the news anchors weredisputing the inanity of some of their statements) was the fact that the uniform (kit) designed by Nike of the English football team does not have the correct colour of the Cross of St George (white with a red cross on it) … the rest of the day all we had was a bunch of right-wing politicians and members of right-wing organisations demanding the flag of St George was on it … this is not news, this is allowing the right-wing to hide beyond yet another threat to the great English civilisation by woke culture. Alas Keir Starmer (the leader of the Labour Party who hopes to become Prime Minister) who seems to think that this has something to do with patriotism (another one of his pronouncements that the left — like he is the left) needs to take up patriotism as we are insufficiently patriotic (perhaps he has misunderstood the difference between jingoism, patriotism and internationalism). Really you cannot make this crap up. It is no longer amazing that you can hear (if you listen closely) the hard-right and far-right clutching their pearls in horror about some perceived threat to English democracy as a “major” news story.
The reporting on the Israeli government and military attack on Gaza is also problematic. Rather than simply reporting the situation, invariably Israeli politicians are brought on to provide Israeli government hasbara; watching right-wing Israeli politicians blame the ongoing genocide and clear starvation on Hamas without proper questioning by news reporters is extremely dangerous and is spreading lies about an horrific situation. Worse, there is a constant linkage between Jews and the state of Israel; there is no recognition that British Jewish opinion on Israel and Zionism itself is contested. This insistence that Israel represents Jews is not only false, it is extremely dangerous as British Jews are not responsible for what the Israeli government and military are doing and many do not support it.
Two days ago, was literally a day of false reporting; it was reported that the US had introduced a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza which was then defeated by the Russians and Chinese. The problem is that was not what the motion said. The US resolution did not demand an immediate ceasefire, their resolution was far more ambiguous. In fact, according to Al Jazeera it said:
“The Security Council determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”
This wording was confirmed by Phyllis Bennis on Democracy Now. But this was not reported by the MSM in Britain; weirdly, only The Guardian talked about the ambiguity of the US Resolution and how what it said was not what Anthony Blinken said it did; and it also seems that the EU is trying to decide a policy as well. But over and over again, all the mainstream news outlets reported the US perspective despite it not being true.
The situation is degenerating for Palestinians in Gaza; we are watching a genocide and mass starvation. Once again, the US, which is the only country that actually could force the Israeli government and military into an immediate ceasefire refuses to do so and blocks any other attempts to do this. The US government could cut off all military and foreign aid to Israel tomorrow, but Biden will not do this, he is still hoping that the Israeli government and military will just do something that they have said they will not do, they still insist on attacking Rafah, they continue to attack hospitals and people are starving.
Quite honestly, the fact is that Israel is blocking humanitarian aid getting into Gaza has raised the fact that deliberate starvation and preventing access to water of a civilian population is a war crime; this has been raised by Human Rights Watch, the UN Commission for Human Rights, Volker Turk, and other humanitarian groups . Putting forward useless and unenforceable resolutions when there is an ongoing genocide and starvation in Gaza will not remove your complicity in genocide and deliberate starvation. Sweden and Germany have resumed their funding to UNRWA and other countries must do so. UNRWA is essential to ensuring the distribution of aid. Yet, the aid has not been restored. When the mainstream news reports are no longer dealing with facts, when they cannot be bothered to read a UN security council resolution. So, what are we to believe when the MSM essentially repeats nonsense and cannot even be bothered to get a copy of the US resolution that is sent to the Security Council of the UN?
This is a general problem
It is almost impossible to hear news that is not politically biased in Britain at this point. Everything is reported from a right-wing perspective specifically that of the government and even the far right (many of whom are members of the British government). So, there are Tory members of Parliament who have appeared regularly on GB News as news commentators (GB news has been accused by OFCOM – the British media regulator – of breaching impartiality rules for allowing right-wing British politicians MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and Philip Davies as news commentators; but faces no sanctions) which has been an important place where anti-woke politicians and speakers regularly appear. But it is also important that we understand that anti-woke speakers appear on the mainstream news regularly where they peddle this hate and division; one does not need to have your own show; it is who actually are the people being interviewed on news programmes.
What has happened is that the right and far right are brought on for interviews and their so-called opponents are not the centrists or heaven forfend anyone even on the soft left. This is partly because the government is on the hard-right because the hard-right and far-right joined the Conservative (Tory) party over Brexit and they vote for the Prime Minister when the previous ones have been thrown out. So, the Executive Branch is on the hard right, there are significant numbers of MPs that are on the hard right, and that is because the membership of the Conservative Party is much further to the right than it was before Boris Johnson (in fact, many of the so-called moderate One-nation Conservatives left government when Johnson was chosen as leader).
The problem goes beyond that, it is the refusal of the MSM to actually present real alternative perspectives to that advocated by the right-wing. Moreover, the impartiality policy literally means that the government’s opinion is reported, the Labour Party’s opinion is allowed to be reported, but no independent people analysis that goes beyond the manner in which the story is covered is reported and the issues that are chosen all have shall we say a right-wing tinge to them. With all that is happening, why was a whole news day devoted to a shift in the uniform of the English football team? If you say that is a light news story, you don’t understand the purpose of a story like that which focusses on what it means to be patriotic which is always something on the right and a whole day listening to fascists and other far-right speakers babbling about the football team’s kit and how it is an insult to the England …
Given how right-wing this government is, it is no longer surprising that our Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attends and speaks about “illegal migration” at the "Atreju" festival/conference in Italy organised by the fascist Fratelli d’Italia and their Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. It is unsurprising that the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman channelling Donald J Trump described a hurricane of migrants or an invasion or a swarm of migrants. The same Suella Braverman describes marches in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza as “hate marches”. It seems that the chant which includes from “the river to the sea” is “antisemitic”; unless, as Rashid Khalidi states in his article in The Nation, of course, right-wing Israeli politicians use it to describe Israel’s legitimate border and then, I guess it is ok … the phrase has meaning and expresses Palestinian hopes as well as Israeli claims ...
Unsurprisingly, the British right has taken several pages from the right of the US (which shouldn’t be surprising as the US right also organises and funds some of this) and there is a whole campaign by certain government members against “Woke Culture” being a threat to British (or English) civilisation, there are consistent and regular attacks against marginalised people (especially trans people, asylum seekers, migrants, benefit seekers, disabled people, single mothers). The problem is that it is not only right-wing politicians (e.g., Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch) that are fuelling the attack on “woke culture”, it is the mainstream media that has adopted these terms as well and have continued to use them.
While I am grateful that the ubiquitous American religious nonsense is absent from the far-right in Britain, this means that they need to come up with different ideological justifications than Jesus or the Bible say this or that and that is why it is a threat. Quite honestly given the supposed separation between church and state in the US, the fact that someone thinks that Jesus or the bible says something should not amount to a hill of beans, but as we know the fact that there is not a legal established church in the US does not mean that there is not a de facto established church which thinks that it has the mandate to demand obedience from everyone whether they are atheist, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs or Hindus.
In the absence of the ability to pretend that God has sent word to you that some things are good or evil, the British politicians have to find other excuses for further oppressing marginalised people or removing their civil rights (again, no formal constitution but the laws of the European human rights act as well as decades of precedent has given Britain a code of civil law and civil rights).
Racism, Misogyny, Disablism, Homophobia and Queerphobia
These politicians say they are speaking for British people; the problem is that they are not. According to the government, it seems that the British people think the biggest threat to Britain and British democracy are the small boats of “illegal migrants” – they are illegal because the British government won’t open up a legal route for them to enter the country. The problem is not the migrants, it is the British government refusing to provide a legal route for them to enter and enable them to live in this country. Unfortunately, some Labour Party politicians have decided that immigration is also a danger (rather than actually follow international treaties we have signed relating to refugees). So while they won’t continue the Tory Rwanda Policy, there is no guarantee that they will provide a legal path to come to Britain for the majority of asylum seekers and migrants.
Like many “crises”, the “small boat crisis” is a manufactured crisis caused by government policy. Their refusal to admit this as well as the consequences of their other policies leading to continual crises essentially has meant that neither the various governments nor their policies are responsible for whatever crises their policies have created. So, their policies are not responsibile for the cost-of-living crisis which still exists despite inflation slowing, it is not responsible for poor wages (I remember Iain Duncan Smith, Tory MP blaming the working poor for their appalling wages and not earning enough), appalling working conditions, insufficient levels and quality of benefits, insufficient housing that are part of the cost-of-living crisis. Nor are they responsible for the broken care system, the broken NHS, political repression, the fact that the police are institutionally racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic. For the Tories, these are not relevant problems for the British people as they are all relating to the government and the government cannot be responsible for the results of all its policies. (It is a weird variant on the ontological proof for the existence of god … ) The fact that racism, misogyny, disablism, homophobia and queerphobia are routinely used by politicians, various organs of the state, and the mainstream media has spread hate in our societies; it is convenient for this government to blame marginalised people rather than accept responsibility for the impact of their own policies (economic, environmental, social and political).
The government may be speaking for some of the British people, but they are not even speaking for the English people. The additional issue is that the Tories really do not have much support at this point in time; while Boris Johnson was elected with an 80-seat majority which gave them a lot of latitude to pass all sorts of awful legislation, but the current government’s legitimacy is debateable. While the party can formally stay in power for 5 years, we need to accept the fact that neither Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak have been elected by the broad populace. (Even if they had been, would this reflect that they have support or that the Tories had sold themselves better?) Rather, they have been chosen by the Tory MPs and the members of the Tory party (which reflect the right-wing bias of Tory MPs and the hard and far-right membership of the Conservative Party) and as such, they are not speaking for anyone but the right and hard-right. Of course, the far-right thinks Sunak and his cronies are too weak; the far-right populist Reform Party represents an additional threat to the Tories at the next election. As if things are not horrible enough, there is always the Reform Party ...
This nonsense that you are speaking for “The British People” is just one more failing ideological perspective. If these elections polls saying the Labour Party are going to win are correct (at the least securing a minority government), then they surely are not speaking for the British (this is the English, Welsh and Scottish) people. The Tories do not run the governments in Wales and Scotland. Wales is run by Labour, Scotland by the Scottish National Party and the chances of the Tories winning in either of those countries is so low that they are not really viewed as serious contenders for winning upcoming elections to Westminster (which look like they are happening in the autumn of 2024). Elections have to be held this year, the Tories can put them off, but they cannot avoid them. The one thing that is obvious at this point, is that the Tories are trying to get as much damage as they can get done before they are tossed out by the voters at the upcoming elections.
The damage they are doing is serious further undermining the public sector (insufficient investment in public services), revenue coming in to the government (national insurance tax cuts), undermining anything like a sustainable environmental agenda (the Labour party bailed on its promised investment), and continued attacks on civil rights and the use of divide and rule politics. The very interesting thing that is happening is that the British people are aware that the anti-woke agenda by politicians is part of an attempt to both distract and divide them.
Kings College London has done some analysis on the war on woke by right-wing politicians and media and whether it will be effective in the upcoming elections and found:
- “The public are most likely to say politicians’ focus on cultural divides has a negative impact on society – and that they do so for political benefits
- A majority of 56% say politicians who talk about divisions over cultural issues are just trying to distract people from other important topics, compared with 11% who say politicians who talk about these divisions genuinely believe it’s an important topic.
- 51% say that when politicians focus on divisions over cultural issues it only divides society further – far greater than the 12% who say this focus helps highlight ways we can improve society.
- 48% say it’s in politicians’ interests to exaggerate divisions over cultural issues, compared with 28% who take the opposite view that there are no political benefits to exaggerating such divisions.”
But even though people here recognise that this is being done deliberately by politicians and the MSM, that does not stop it from being used. We will have to wait until the elections to see how many people have bought into this nonsense. Some of my favourite moments happen when the Tories blame “foreigners” for attacking democracy … of course, it is never them though they have been working very hard to undermine guaranteed basic civil rights.
What is happening in Britain is part of a shift away from Liberal Democracy towards the far right and it is part of an international problem. But it is not only that these hard- and far-right political organisations that are being elected, the fact is that even in countries where they are not in power, fascism itself is being normalised as the mainstream media collaborates with the far-right and gives them access to the mainstream media.
What we need to recognise is that this is part of a general political shift internationally, it is not happening in a vacuum and independently of our reality; it is deliberate and it creates further divisions in our societies and the MSM has played a role in it. The reality is that Liberal Democracies themselves are partially responsible for the rise and normalisation of the hard and far-right just as they are for the attacks on the hard and far left. But when the left is weak, and there is a strong right, this creates an extremely dangerous shift in our world.