The Assassination of Objective Reality by the Coward Fraser Nelson

The Spectator editor's response to the Huw Edwards story and The Sun's grim ethical vacuum is another column in praise of the 'free' press

Previously: The Shift
Moving the parameters of the story and the definition of 'wrong-doing' is the only way the right-wing press ‘wins’ its one-sided war on Huw Edwards.

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I don’t want to be accused of mincing my words: Fraser Nelson is a simpering apologist for everything that is wrong in British society who delivers his lies and propagandistic distortions with an affected accent of such irritating quality that he seems like he was invented by the writers of Jonathan Pie from a brief that read, ‘crypto-fascist Scottish far-right magazine editor’.

The aftermath of The Sun making accusations about Huw Edwards that it has now back-tracked from faster than Nelson whenever one of his columnists puts out a column of outright racist doggerel, has prompted him to file a Telegraph piece headlined If Labour seizes on the Huw Edwards story to regulate the press, we all lose. It’s a classic example of the selective ‘we’ that the British media so loves to deploy.

The ‘we’ he is talking about is not you or I; it’s not about journalists who do the hard work of actually standing up stories (yes, they exist — like a rare white rhino or some kind of weird-looking fish that can only be encounter in the far, far depths of the ocean where only tragic liners and billionaire corpses reside); it’s about Fraser Nelson and his weird band of creeps, weirdos, and bastards; it’s about sending a begging note to Daddy Keith Murdoch in the hope that he will buy The Spectator out of the debt purgatory that the not-yet-dead remaining Barclay brother condemned it to suffer.

Nelson is so disingenuous it is hard to imagine he has ever been ingenuous or can even conceive of that state in his wildest imagination:

Some allegations still hang unanswered: was a young man paid £35,000 for sexually explicit photos? But importantly, a lawyer for the young person in question says nothing indecent or illegal took place. Both the Met and South Wales Police say they have looked, and found nothing to warrant investigation. If there’s no criminality, why did The Sun ever expose this? Why has a man’s reputation and career been ruined? Where is the public interest? 

“Some allegations still hang unanswered…” And that is because The Sun — its editors and rat fink hacks — have not produced any evidence for their claims. Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but all News UK and its many apologists and sycophants have offered is extraordinary bullshit. “Why did The Sun ever expose this?” Because The Sun is a political tool of Keith Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-born, American citizen who is allowed to interfere in the running of the UK and especially in the continued existence of the British Broadcasting Corporation because his sociopathic whims are catered to by the most venal and cowardly politicians on all sides of the parliament.

Nelson continues:

This matters because it’s set against a deeply political backdrop. Keir Starmer is currently deciding whether to impose state regulation of the press, in the very likely event that he becomes prime minister. This would conclude a power struggle which, for the last 300 years, politicians have lost. Press freedom has hitherto been protected, as a fundamental feature of democracy. But it may soon end, under the pretext of fitting constraints on muck-raking, terror-inflicting tabloids. 

This is a horror story, told by Nelson with a flashlight under his chin, designed to appeal to an audience of one: the increasingly senescent Rupert Murdoch.

We do not have a ‘free’ press. We have a press owned by less than a handful of ideologically right-wing billionaires and a large amoral conglomerate (hello to the extremely well-remunerated monsters at Reach). We do not have anything resembling a real democracy but we have a ‘free’ press that pretends we do like a horrific am/dram group dedicated to maintaining that myth.

Nelson goes on:

It’s striking how much of our current politics is shaped by the battle over press regulation 10 years ago, with Hugh Grant and Max Mosley leading the charge. This drama brought Starmer into the political world. As director of public prosecutions (DPP), his organisation was accused of advising police that, unless they could prove that hackers opened a new, rather than a saved voicemail (quite a tricky thing to do), no crime could be proven. 

In a written statement to Parliament in 2009, Starmer himself concluded that “to prove the criminal offence of interception the prosecution must prove that the actual message was intercepted prior to it being accessed by the intended strecipient”. Police were baffled. 

So, Starmer acted in the interests of the corrupt press (from which he received a significant amount of wining and dining as DPP) but Nelson wants to pretend that the Leader of the Opposition, who recently attended Rupert Murdoch’s summer party and whose front bench were crammed into the venue for The Spectator’s own nibbles and bigotry summer bonanza, is somehow a radical fighter for press reform.

[Starmer] later appeared to change his position and opened the door to the massive hacking investigation that saw Andy Coulson, then a Tory spin doctor, imprisoned. It was a rare moment in which the legal system seemed susceptible to pressure.

Nelson neglects to mention here that Coulson was guilty as sin and that the courts determined as such. Coulson himself doesn’t deny his guilt and has done what all guilty creatures in the British establishment do: He’s parlayed it into presenting a podcast, a technique known as the Alastair Campbell Method.

Starmer embodied this new fusion between the law and politics, becoming one of the few DPP’s to embark on a political career. He ran for Labour leader with a campaign video boasting that he had used his position as DPP to “take on the Murdoch press”. This is how he defined himself: as a leader who would stand up to powerful newspapers. To have this included in the launch video seemed to be a promise to the (many) Labour activists who have always seen press regulation as unfinished business. 

Again, Nelson deliberately omits some important context: Starmer has fucked off every one of his disingenuous pledges and often contributes columns and suck-up statements to The Sun and Times. He has no desire to take on Rupert Murdoch other than to rub himself seductively against him (yes, really enjoy that image before vomiting into a bucket).

The threat now is to make newspapers and magazines submit to a government regulator and become, for the first time, part of a politician’s train set. I had a taste of what this would mean when David Cameron first proposed this madcap scheme. I started being phoned by politicians warning me, as an editor, to call off such-and-such a journalist or stop them asking certain questions. The implication being: we, the politicians, will be calling the shots soon. You’ll have to behave “responsibly”, a word that we’ll define. 

Such threats led The Spectator to pledge to its readers that we would never sign up to a state regulator. But under Labour’s apparent plans, there would be consequences. Under the not-yet-invoked Section 40 of the Crime & Courts Act 2013, publications risk being bled dry by lawsuits, forced to pay the costs of anyone who sues us – win or lose. Just last week, a Labour source said Starmer had decided to press ahead and implement the full state regulation regime, even if it meant “a fight with the press”. 

The Spectator loves to pretend that it is a rebel organisation standing up to the forces of the establishment while having them over every summer to eat mini-burgers and drink champagne. The Spectator wants to talk about how maverick it is while giving out awards to politicians that are essentially soft sponsorship.

So this is why it will suit a great many people to say that The Sun has somehow destroyed Huw Edwards’ life: it brings back the narrative of the Wild West press in need of a sheriff. But The Sun never alleged criminality; it just sought to expose the paucity of the BBC complaints process. If the corporation had investigated properly in the first place, the whole circus could have been avoided. 

It may or may not ‘suit a great many people’ but it’s also true. The Sun has the journalistic ethics of a pig rolling in its own shit. The Sun alleged criminality; Nelson is — shock horror — lying again. The Sun ran a headline claiming that “cops” were going to swoop on the then-unnamed BBC star and arrest him for various crimes. The police have now said there was NO criminality but many ‘normal’ people still believe there was. This was a wizard hunt and The Sun is delighted with a job ‘well done’.

This matters, given the past failures to investigate TV stars: Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris in the UK, Charlie Rose and Bill O’Reilly in the US. In all such cases complaints were made, but not properly investigated. The common theme: a culture where the TV host, film studio boss or – in the case of churches – a priest is so revered that complaints are not taken seriously. 

This is a disgusting bit of rhetorical footwork here — it has all the grace of Ed ‘George Osborne is my podcast pal’ Balls heffalumping around on Strictly — and elides Edwards’ unwise and perhaps inappropriate workplace behaviour (the sort of thing former editors of The Spectator have got away with multiple times) with rape, paedophilia, and necrophilia enabled by Tory ministers who gave Savile a key to a secure hospital and his own flat on the grounds.

When the parents of the young person at the centre of the Edwards allegations went to the BBC, they claim they felt brushed off. So they went to a newspaper, the obvious next step. 

When the estranged parents of a 20-year-old at the centre of the ginned-up allegations went to the BBC, they claim they felt brushed off (despite failing to return calls and emails). So they went to The Sun and accused their child of a crime and of being a crack addict, the obvious next step.

This is a classic example of the role of newspapers in a democracy. If anyone seeks to report a scandal and feels ignored, they can come to a vigorous, fearless and free press. It’s a murky, often unpleasant business. But society is better off with newspapers that will pick up investigations. Better a rumbustious tabloid press than a system where the rich and powerful can hide misdeeds behind privacy laws – or where politicians can call the press to heel. And yes, hacking was a problem – once. It now stands as an historic offence, albeit one still being pursued in the courts for claims that date back years, or even decades. 

The ‘free’ press hid the involvement of its friends, family members, and sexual partners in Partygate; it regularly creates or hypes up obvious bullshit scandals like CatGirlGate and the Trojan Horse Affair; it hides or only partially reports things like the George Osborne email or the fact that Boris Johnson spent a large amount of time at Lebedev’s Italian villa while Foreign Secretary after having given his security detail the slip. “It’s a murky, often unpleasant business” is the only true line in Nelson’s column.

This may, soon, be an out-of-date argument. The Sun’s circulation is down 80 per cent from its peak, and its market value was recently estimated at about zero. All over Europe, tabloids are in crisis – and those enterprising, controversial scoops may soon be seen as a product of a bygone age. Newspapers, in general, sell less than half of what they did at the time when the hacking scandal first broke. Hence the threat of regulation: not because the press is strong, but because it’s weak. So the Labour leader is right in one regard: now is the perfect time to strike.

Sir Keir Starmer will do nothing. Nelson knows that. But he knows his future boss Mr Murdoch will delight in this scary story.

Tabloids are in crisis? Don’t promise me a good time; I can only get so hard.

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