Private Conversations Among Elites

Writing in the Telegraph, Peter Oborne seeks to develop the argument that, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, we are moving into a ‘post-Murdoch age’ where British politics may develop genuine substance.

In his article, Oborne suggests that Blair and New Labour reinterpreted the British political tradition as a private conversation among elite groups, of which the most important in Blair’s eyes was Rupert Murdoch’s corporate empire. In that he is not wrong. Yet, says Oborne:

It is this system of government that has been exposed in all of its barbarism and moral horror over the past few weeks. As the Westminster season mercifully draws towards a close, it is extremely important to ponder what comes next – for I am certain that there is a wonderful opportunity here to embark upon a new political era, and a new way of doing things.

Sadly, this fantasy is unlikely to become reality in the foreseeable future. No such real exposure has been given to the ‘private conversations among elite groups’ which Oborne describes in his piece, because the re-emergence of phone hacking was primarily a means by the liberal media to stop News Corp’s BSkyB bid.

While the exposure of Murdoch’s corporate meetings with George Osborne and David Cameron have again exposed Cameron as politically inept (if we needed any further proof), it has not drawn a line under similar meetings occurring in future.

Peter Hitchens used a chapter in his book The Broken Compass (recently re-released as The Cameron Delusion) to describe the relationship between journalist and politician, which is at times very close indeed – and this will always be so. But, as Mr Hitchens more recently described, the relationship between the press and politicians should be identical to that between a dog and a lamp post. The problem arises when, as has recently been more apparent, the press and politicians are of one mind.

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A Rude Awakening

I’ve just arrived back from the blazingly hot island of Malta where I’ve spent this past week trying to forget about the realities of the present and instead learn a little more about the not so recent past.

Even so, I’ve managed to keep a few tabs on the news (if you could really call it that) in the evenings via Sky News in my hotel room (it was a choice between that, CNN and a selection of rather dubious foreign comedy channels).

Amusingly, I also caught a late night news round-up on the BBC World Service with Richard North as a panellist. Amazing really; you go abroad to get away from the work, the blogs, Richard North et all, and yet the man still manages to find a way through!

No doubt parts of our beloved national media are being overcome with similar feelings. As much as the press try to ignore the current economic realities, they just keep cropping back up to divert their attention from the vital task of endlessly discussing themselves.

Just before my return, it seemed that, all of a sudden, the broadcast and newspaper media had finally woken up to the fact that, yes, the hacking affair was not perhaps the most important item of news on the current, reality-based agenda. The Euro zone economies are collapsing under a mountain of self-inflicted debt, and there is a very real possibility that this could destroy the single currency.

This collapse has been on the cards for some time now, and yet if you listen to large sections of the media then it would appear that they have only recently uncovered this crisis, such is the wide-eyed wonderment with which it is breathlessly reported.

It strikes me that the treatment of the financial crisis by the media is in many ways similar to the famine in Somalia. It wasn’t until this week when the United Nations publically declared that there was a famine in Somalia that the media suddenly took interest. Before the announcement, it was if the famine had not existed, such was the miniscule level of reporting. Similarly, now that the European Union, in the form of our dear leader, José Manuel Barroso, has spoken of the severity of the European economic situation then suddenly, guess what, it’s a crisis! Who would have thought it..?

It seems, in the collective eyes of the media establishment, that for something to exist or become fact then it must be acknowledged by the U.N. or receive other supposedly ‘expert’ approval. And it’s not just any old ‘expert’ that will do either, but ones carefully selected from ‘accepted’ groups and organisations who have a monopoly on officially and legitimately being allowed to care about suffering, starvation or our old favourite, climate change. If anyone outside of the bubble expresses an opinion, however valid or important, then nothing is done. It is ignored, until suddenly, an oik at the BBC or Guardian decides that, you know what, the European economies might actually be on the verge of hitting the fan because José told us so. Only then, apparently, is it worthy of being ‘news’…

News That Makes The News

I did not shed a tear when I learnt of the demise of The News of the World, which is to close next week with a final edition after 168 years of publishing.

It was never my newspaper of choice, being rather light on actual news and rather heavy on the kind of moronic celebrity gossip designed to keep the plebs occupied rather than focused on anything meaningful or important.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that The News of the World will disappear all together, with News International PLC almost certainly planning to re-launch the paper under a different brand. Furthermore, the same journalists working at The News of the World will simply transfer across to the new paper or indeed another paper – so nothing much or substantial will have changed in that regard beyond the image.

However, the fate of The News of the World is not actually the really important matter, but instead the manner of its downfall and what was subsequently brought to light (and I am not referring to the alleged phone hacking – which is rather unimportant and a matter for the police and the courts).

The so-called phone hacking scandal is firstly an absolutely classic example of Westminster-village journalism, and illustrates just how the news corporations make the news and set the public agenda to the exclusion of much more important stories and events outside of the political classes’ bubble. As Richard North observed, did our MPs ever demand an emergency debate over the banking crisis, or more recently the Euro zone and debt crisis in Greece, as they have over phone hacking? The answer is, of course, er, no…

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A Thousand Years Of History

Our late Indian summer is at an end and the first chilled winds of October bring with them tidings of Ireland’s eventual capitulation to the unceasing machine of European integration.

Despite a valiant rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish last year in the face of overwhelming opposition from their entire political class, the media and big business, the nation that once sought independence from British rule has been bullied into accepting rule from distant Brussels.

Only Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and it will likely not be long before they do. As the Czech President Vaclav Klaus sadly noted to waiting journalists:

The Irish had the last chance to say something about Lisbon… because after today’s Irish referendum there will never be another referendum in Europe.

And slowly but surely, as day turns to night, the EU’s slow motion coup d’état takes effect. Our sovereignty has been strangled, our independence dissolved. Squandered are centuries of hard won liberties, rights and freedoms – so often without our knowledge or even a care. It is, as Hugh Gaitskell so accurately predicted, to be the end of a thousand years of history.

Yet, there is hope. We, as a nation, are still capable of saving ourselves from the jaws of defeat as we have so many times before. Perhaps it will be that resilience of character and spirit that sees us through again – but only if we will it to be so. For there will be no-one else behind us to catch us should we falter or fall; no foreign intervention to rescue us from our fate.

That decision is up to us now. Either we wake from our delusions of a benevolent European Union, realise that our future as a truly democratic nation lies in grave danger, and resolve to act – or we slowly subside into bureaucracy, and foreign rule by an unelected state, a fate for which we will only have ourselves to blame.