The ‘Great’ British Gaslight Factory: From getting a BBC News job to being an England footballer, telling the truth is becoming a professional liability…
The ‘Great’ British Gaslight Factory: From getting a BBC News job to being an England footballer, telling the truth is becoming a professional liability…
You’re increasingly expected to accept the government’s reality instead.
Here’s the test to see if you’re qualified to work in the Great British Gaslight Factory, as set by its newly-appointed recruitment manager, cursed egg, Tory MP’s brother, ex-Director of Communications for Theresa May, sometime GB News consigliere, and past head of BBC News’ Westminster political programmes Robbie Gibb:
1. Do you consider it controversial to say that there is a group within Downing Street which “doesn’t want to reach out to minorities and work with them?”
2. Multi-part question, is it reasonable to say that each of the following figures has used “sleight of hand” in persuading people that they represent “outsiders”?
Boris Johnson
Donald Trump
Nigel Farage
If you answered ‘yes’ to all of those questions: Congratulations! You have a grasp of reality. Unfortunately, that disqualifies you from a role at GBGF.
If you answered ‘no’: Great news! Gibbo thinks you’d be fantastic at running the BBC News and BBC World News channels. ‘Fantastic’ here is defined as unlikely to piss off the government.
In the perpetually aflame room of British public discourse, the story of ex-HuffPo UK editor-in-chief Jess Brammar having her potential appointment to oversee the output of the BBC News channels could seem a minor concern. But it is very instructive about Britain under the Johnson governments combination of the sinister and incompetent — like an all-black Range Rover with tinted windows that sweeps around the block before discouraging a disconcerting number of clowns in full makeup, tripping over their big shoes and they shout threats.
The Times reports today, under the headline No 10 supports Robbie Gibb over claims he blocked BBC appointment of Jess Brammar, that:
The government has backed a BBC board member after he raised concerns about appointing a journalist who shared left-wing views on social media as head of the broadcaster’s news channels.
The implication seems to be that only people with solidly right-wing credentials — such as the current Director-General and former Tory council candidate Tim Davie and Rishi Sunak mentor/Tory donor turned BBC Chairman Richard Sharp — need apply for roles at the corporation.
The Financial Times broke the story on Saturday that Gibb, a BBC board member as well as a member of Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden’s ‘review’1 of public sector broadcasting (focused particularly on the BBC’s future), had issued a warning to the corporation about hiring Jess Brammar. As well as being a former HuffPo editor, Brammar was previously deputy editor of BBC Newsnight.
The Times story today continues, in that particularly hyperbolic manner British hacks reserve for the revelation of OLD TWEETS!:
On Saturday old tweets by Brammar emerged in which she claimed there was an “influential camp” at Downing Street that “doesn’t want to reach out to minorities and work with them”. She also accused Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage of a “sleight of hand” in persuading people they represented “outsiders”. The role would put her in charge of the domestic BBC News channels and BBC World News, which has an audience of 121 million.
How could Brammar suggest that there is an “influential camp” in Downing Street that exploits division for political ends? It’s not as if the Prime Minister’s advisor on race relations, Samuel Kasamu resigned over exactly the same concerns. Or that he said in an interview with The Guardian in June:
There are some people in government who feel like the right way to win is to pick a fight on the culture war and to exploit division.
And obviously, only a rabid revolutionary Marxist with an AK under the bed and a desire to destroy the British state forever would suggest that Boris Johnson (Eton and Balliol College, Oxford), Donald Trump (the bent billionaire son of a billionaire property developer) and Nigel Farage (the Dulwich College-educated commodities trader turned populist tub-thumper) were not truly working-class tribunes of the people.
The Brammar row is not about old tweets. It is about the fact that, as HuffPo UK boss, she defended her journalists against attacks from government ministers. First, Kemi Badenoch, the Treasury and equalities minister, used Twitter to accuse then-HuffPo reporter Nadine White (now at The Independent) of “looking to sow distrust by making up claims” via the horrific crime of… asking questions.
Brammar complained to the Cabinet Office about Badenoch’s behaviour. It sat on the complaint for almost a month before replying that it would not investigate the matter because Badenoch tweets calling White’s reasonable requests for comment “creepy and bizarre” on her ‘personal’ Twitter account.
Responding to the Cabinet Office, Brammar wrote for HuffPost UK:
It is cold comfort that we were not alone in mistakenly thinking that the minister’s verified Twitter account, in which she describes herself as “Treasury & Equalities Minister”, was in some way linked to her job…
… It is a little confusing that Kemi Badenoch published screenshots of messages sent to her professional address and the Treasury press office in a “personal” capacity. But it’s certainly a relief that, when she declared to her 39,000 followers that Nadine’s conduct was a “sad insight into how some journalists operate”, and accused HuffPost and Nadine of “looking to sow distrust”, she wasn’t speaking as a government minister – because these claims are not only unbecoming of a senior politician, but betray either an alarming ignorance of how the press fits into our democratic system or a cynical display of bad faith.
Two months later, Jacob Rees-Mogg falsely claimed that HuffPost UK’s deputy political editor, Arj Singh, was “either a knave or a fool” and accused him of “low-quality journalism” and practising “a very cheap level of journalism”. It was over a story about the possibility of the UK striking trade deals with countries whose human rights records breach the European Convention on Human Rights. Singh accurately quoted a leaked extract of a video call between the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and staff at his department.
Brammar again, reasonably, defended her reporter, saying that Rees-Mogg had used parliamentary privilege “to smear a journalist”.
Let’s look at how today’s Times report describes those incidents:
Brammar had become embroiled in a bitter dispute with Downing Street in January in her role as editor of the HuffPost UK website. Kemi Badenoch, the Treasury and equalities minister, used Twitter to accuse a HuffPost reporter of “looking to sow distrust by making up claims”.
Brammar responded by accusing Badenoch of fuelling the abuse of “young, female, black journalists”. Two months later Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the Commons, accused another HuffPost journalist of being “either a knave or a fool”. Brammar accused him of using the protection of parliamentary privilege “to smear a journalist”.
To say that Brammar “became embroiled” is an interesting and loaded way of putting it. Badenoch launched the attack on White. Brammar simply stood up for her reporter as a good editor should. It takes two to embroil and it was Badenoch who started the pot boiling.
Similarly, Rees-Mogg used questions in the House of Commons to take aim at Arj Singh. Brammar replied with a statement of fact: The MP did used parliamentary privilege to attack Singh’s reporting. ‘Oddly’ The Times neglects to mention some other aspects of that incident:
Rees-Mogg also said in parliament that he thought that such “poor quality, online journalism” was “not the sort of thing that would happen in The Times.” He is, of course, the son of former Times editor and long-time Times columnist William Rees-Mogg. More importantly, he’s a personal friend of Times proprietor Rupert Murdoch with whom he is listed as having enjoyed lunches often.
In the government’s last official disclosure of meetings between ministers and media executives/editors, Rees-Mogg listed a lunch with Rupert Murdoch on 25 September 2020 as an “informal lunch between friends”.
Today’s Times piece is based on ‘support’ for Gibb offered by one “senior government source”. It says:
A senior government source said yesterday that Gibb, whose brother Nick is a Conservative MP, had discussed his concerns with other members of the 12-strong BBC board. “Robbie wasn’t acting on his own,” the source said. “He had consulted with other members. Labour can push for him to go all they like, he’s not going to. Appointments are a matter for the BBC but that includes the board of the BBC.”
You see, BBC appointments are purely a matter for the BBC until such time as the BBC wants to appoint someone the government doesn’t like. It’s a simple equation and not even remotely corrupt.
To understand the mindset being laundered by the ‘respectable’ Times, it’s worth looking at the raw material it’s working with: The insinuations of the perpetually thirsty, drink driving enthusiast Paul Staines. Guido Fawkes — Staines’ pseudo-rebellious establishment-loving virtual scandal sheet which is named after the man who tried to blow up Parliament but oddly obsessed with the Queen — wrote yesterday:
It is being reported that Jess Brammar is in the running to become head of BBC News, a position of great sensitivity in that the role involves setting the tone for the news channels and being responsible for the impartiality of the BBC’s news output. The former editor of the Huffington Post had for years pushed a left-wing agenda in that position. On every wedge issue she has overseen output that puts her on the left-wing side of the political agenda. Huffington Post during her editorship recycled press releases for the Labour Party as news. Often giving a platform for Labour shadow cabinet ministers to have an actual byline.
Brammar is a prolific tweeter, sending dozens of tweets daily, so it is notable that she has recently deleted 12 years of tweets, leaving just the last month’s anodyne, apolitical tweets left for public scrutiny – which in itself tells you something. Her previous editorship saw output that was uniformly anti-austerity, anti-Brexit, pro-BLM and promoted a woke agenda. What on earth is the BBC thinking, in view of their mandate to be impartial, by considering Brammar for the appointment? There are plenty of senior journalists who are capable and have overseen more balanced output. Do the BBC really want to become a mirror image of GB News?
So the argument is that no one who has ever worked for a media outlet left of Mussolini at his most strawberry sherbet frappe-soaked unhinged should be allowed to work for the BBC. Furthermore, allowing members of the opposition to contribute op-eds is an unforgivable sin, rather than a perfectly normal part of political debate in any functioning country.
As is common with Staines, he chooses not to include quotes of the “uniformly anti-austerity, anti-Brexit, pro-BLM… woke agenda” that he accuses Brammar of having. It seems that giving space to things the government doesn’t agree with is a kind of journalism that the wine-drenched pseudo-rebel thinks shouldn’t be allowed. And really, a man with four drink driving convictions is in no position to lecture anyone about balance…
The desire to dig through Brammar’s past tweets — and performative outrage that she has deleted a significant number of them to avoid such mischief — is rather at odds with the Right’s endless harping on about “cancel culture”. Staines along with The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and Sir Robbie ‘Robbo’ Gibb are all engaged in an effort to ‘cancel’ her employment prospects.
Isn’t combing through tweets in search of a ‘gotcha’, the kind of thing that self-appointed free speech tsar and legendarily lonely bridegroom Toby Young calls “offence archaeology” after his own volume of vomit-inducing tweets cause him trouble? Shouldn’t he and the ‘Free Speech Union’ — pressure group in a pair of stolen trousers — be rushing to Brammar’s defence?
At the time of writing both Young and the Free Speech Union seem to be silencing themselves on this one. Perhaps Toby is still hoping he’ll get that mention in the New Year’s honours list he so craves.
The Daily Telegraph, which so often pretzels itself over ‘cancel culture’, is among the outlets digging for ‘dirt’ on Jess Brammar. On Saturday, it published a story headlined BBC considers left-wing, anti-Brexit journalist for top news job containing the following ‘shocking’ claim:
However, The Telegraph has recovered tweets in which she suggests Brexit was bad for the NHS, and poking fun at Mr Johnson.
Oh no! That sounds bad. Exactly the sort of thing that would see you eliminated from the GBGF’s latest recruitment round. Let’s see the horrific messages:
During Theresa May’s premiership [Brammar] tweeted about Parliamentary wrangling over Brexit forcing the then-prime minister to delay the launch of the NHS 10-year plan, opining: “Just in case you need an indication of what Brexit is doing to UK politics”.
That appears to be a political journalist stating a fact about politics. The “poking fun at Mr Johnson”? Well, those tweets don’t appear in the story. And if they had, what would they prove? That no journalist who has ever worked somewhere with different rules to the BBC can ever get a job at the corporation? That would narrow the recruitment pool significantly if it were actually what the Right wants to happen, rather than a bad faith ruse designed to target people they don’t like.
And there’s another reason that Brammar is getting beasted by the papers:
During the debate earlier this year about the Duchess of Sussex and racism in British journalism and following the Society of Editors kneejerk rejection of there being any racism in the profession, Brammar said:
I think what's crucial to remember is that our industry includes people who are from minorities that have not been treated well by aspects of the Press.
This was not just about journalists who could see that the Society of Editors' statement was factually incorrect calling that out, it was also about supporting our colleagues within our own industry who are impacted by that bigotry.
We can't pretend to be surprised about the lack of diversity in our newsrooms when we aren't addressing this.
Saying something or someone is racist is always a bigger crime to the British press than actually being racist. The Daily Mail, which always harks back to Paul Dacre going after Stephen Lawrence’s killers (because Lawrence’s father had previously some decorating work for him so was “respectable”), gets particularly angry when people point out its long and inglorious record of racism.
Barely concealing that the inspiration for its own attack on Brammar came from Guido Fawkes’ lead, The Daily Mail ends its boxout on her old tweets with this:
Despite sharing her left-of-centre views on a number of topics, it has been claimed that Ms Brammar has now deleted her tweets from the last 12 years, leaving just a month's worth of content on her feed.
A tweet read: 'Why would a prolific tweeter like delete 12 years of tweets with all her insights on Brexit, Boris and current affairs?
'We now only have 30 days of anodyne tweets with barely a mention of politics. Fancy that.'
“It has been claimed” and “a tweet read” — claimed by whom? A tweet from whom? A claim from Guido Fawkes supported by a tweet from Guido Fawkes.
As I’m writing this edition, the radio is reporting on Tyrone Mings’ message last night criticising Priti Patel’s sudden shock at racism directed towards members of the England men’s football team just weeks after she defended fans booing the team for taking the knee as an anti-racist symbol.
He wrote:
You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.
It’s a brave and necessary correction to Priti Patel’s latest shift in the gaslight factory in which she followed the foreman, Boris Johnson, in pretending that the government she’s part of hasn’t harnessed division at every turn. As Peter Oborne noted, Boris Johnson’s proud record of anti-racism includes calling black people ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ and repeated used a racist slur in one of his books, as well as notoriously calling women wearing burkas “letterboxes” and defending colonialism in Africa.
Already right-wing outriders are coming for Mings. Telegraph contributor, former Chief Economist at the Policy Exchange think-tank and ‘consultant’ Andrew Lilico published a thread last night in which he said the footballer should be “ashamed of himself” and went on to argue that:
You shouldn't be able to go around accusing the Home Secretary to her face of stoking racism & still play for England without an apology, submission & period of being unavailable for selection. The world can't work like that.
Yes, that’s a white man, in the year of our lord 2021, saying that a black footballer should “submit” simply for exercising his right to free speech.
Lilico is so on the fringe that even most of the other bastards don’t want to be associated with him but you can be sure his ‘take’ will be replicated by several columnists before the week is over.
This is what it’s like to live in the Great British Gaslight Factory. People who state the obvious observable truth are attacked, belittled, and monstered by a press that is, in large part, content to present reality as what the government says it is rather than what we can all see around us. It is an environment in which commentators can get away with arguing that the real racists are the anti-racists and a man whose career is littered with racism is fit to be Prime Minister.
The story of Brammar and the BBC News job is just the latest example of something I’ve said in this newsletter time and again: Those columnists and commentators who howl endlessly about the right to free speech aren’t really calling for that — they’re demanding freedom for Right speech and freedom from any opinion they consider ‘left wing’.
It’s a ‘review’ in so much as you could describe the deliberations of a hanging judge as “reviewing the evidence”.