Review of newly published book: PANDERING TO POPULISM? JOURNALISM AND POLITICS IN A POST-TRUTH AGE
Bite-Sized Books (www.bite-sizedbooks.com) have taken on the crucial issues of the role of the traditional media in a social media world and in a world of radical new political movements and parties. Pandering to Populism? (Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y25vtpta) contains some excellent essays by people wrestling as journalists and academics with these problems. The editors see the growing strength of the new parties and the ways traditional parties have to change their views and preoccupations to stay in the national conversations. They mainly see the rise of in terms of Trump, Farage and Brexit, though they see the bigger picture with many radical party challengers of left as well as right in many EU states.
They date the phenomenon to the poor economic performance of Europe since the banking crash of 2008, though US performance has been considerably better with US living standards and productivity growth far outpacing the feeble European pace. They see that people have come to be anti-net zero, anti-migration, anti-EU and anti wokery, and often attribute this to dissatisfaction with the poor economic performance of the last 17 years.
John Curtice charts the collapse of support for the Conservatives in the 2024 election, and the poor result for Labour which still translated into a landslide of seats. He points to low levels of turnout as well as unprecedented numbers voting for parties other than the traditional main three. Trevor Phillips in an elegant Foreword shows how the growing anti-establishment movement today is left as well as right. He sees it as a strong condemnation of two main UK parties that have not listened to what the public want, and who have failed to see growing resentment at the changing of national culture through migration. Maybe in the case of some Conservative Ministers it was not so much not listening as failing to get the system to do what people wanted. On migration a succession of Home Secretaries struggled to stop the boats and cut the numbers, only to face opposition not just from government bodies but from the courts.
Stephen Cushion from his academic studies of the media thinks the answer to the rise of populism is to get broadcast journalists to fact check more things. He praises BBC Verify for challenging the Leave claim in the referendum that the UK would save £350 m a week of contributions to the EU once we had left. Yet this is what we are now enjoying, with an EU putting up contributions by more than we thought and the UK at last free of all such payments. He is pleased the BBC also “called out” Rishi Sunak in the 2024 election for claiming the next Labour government would raise taxes by £2000 per family. There was no attempt to call out the Labour claim they would not increase any of the big three taxes. Once in office they imposed a large National Insurance rise on the self-employed and employers. Labour has already put through a £40 bn tax hike with more likely to come in the next budget. With 20 million families in the UK £40 bn looks a bit like Rishi’s £2000 per family, as families and individuals end up paying the extra National Insurance through price rises and lost jobs.
Stephen Cushion has missed one of the main points made by the Populists. The so-called facts used by the establishment are often wrong or simply are lies. Take the Remain campaign, as he is so worried about Brexit. They used the Treasury and Bank of England in a political campaign to say if we voted to leave GDP would fall, unemployment would rise and jobs would be lost. After the vote the opposite happened, with GDP increasing, employment increasing and unemployment falling. What would Remain have said if the Bank and Treasury had backed the Leave campaign claims? Doubtless they would have told the Bank and Treasury to stay out of politics. The Remain campaign put out a bizarre forecast that over the next 15 years GDP would be 4% less than if we had not left the EU. This often was misrepresented as a 4% fall in GDP from current levels. This is now regularly repeated as a fact of Brexit when we have not reached the 15-year mark and when there is no evidence of any such fall owing to Brexit. Our service sector trade has grown rapidly since 2016 including to the EU and is the dominant part of our exports.
Stephen Cushion could have asked why there is no fact checking of the Bank of England, constantly claiming inflation will return to the 2% target when it does not? Why did he not call them out for forecasting 2% inflation for 2022 when it hit 11%? How wrong can you be without being accused of promoting a fictional reality you would like to see? Why no fact checking of the current government’s claim they would smash the gangs, as we see illegal migration up by more than a third this year?
My favourite mini essay in this selection is that of Tor Clark. The delicious caricature of establishment attitudes is wicked in its accuracy. He mourns the lack of effective challenge to Brexit, glossing over the concerted efforts of the combined civil service, legal and Opposition party establishment to prevent Brexit happening and to block any Brexit wins after the vote. He thinks immigration is all positive, filling vacancies that need filling, without pausing to ask how we house and provide for all those people coming to low-income jobs or to stay in a hotel with no work. He says, “GB News is driving a coach and horses through previously established hard rules on balance and impartiality”. Yet every GB News programme has a left-wing critic on to provide balance sadly lacking on the BBC. GB News will run big stories on illegal migration, rape gangs and other difficult topics which the main media refuses to cover or covers by just offering the establishment view.
Tor Clark’s fear that a crisis of confidence in the legitimacy of news journalism could become a crisis of confidence in the legitimacy of the state misses the point of populism. Populists think the state is letting them down and failing society. They see mainstream media as part of the same problem. More fact checking will not hack it. The two sides do not agree the facts or choose to use different facts to illustrate their arguments. Rigged fact checking to expose exaggerations by Populists need to be balanced by exposing the outright lies of an establishment that has failed to control the borders, failed to deliver strong economic growth and could not even keep inflation under control.
Do get a copy of Pandering to Populism? It reveals a lot about why we are in a mess.
June 19, 2025
Inded I will be ordering a copy of said book
I get angry when people like me and millions more are called Populist Yes we’re against Net Stupid, open borders, nanny state etc
We object to government giving away out assets and prosecuting our armed forces for carrying out orders under fire
The majority in Parliament and the Judiciary are against the people and they use the word Populist to denigrate us.
The tide is at last turning against these evil people but they won’t give up quietly, they are so convinced if their moral superiority
Just look at Milibrain for a classic example, destroying our country on a crusade which is neither feasible ar necessary but no one had the ability to stop him
Etc ed
June 19, 2025
When did the Populist become pejorative? To be popular is surely, what politicians must be, so are all politicians populists?
The past few days are playing out like a doomsday disaster movie. Trump says no new wars, goes to Canada and treats the other participants with disdain, quite reasonably, leaves when he realises Netanyahu has him cornered and decides he might play the American hero by saving the world from an evil, nuclear rogue state. Instead of carrying out the necessary quietly, he showboats his authority, making the whole world wait on his whims. Now the other world powers have ground into action and started to enter the rhetorical arena.
This could all go very badly.
Starmer looks like a daft rabbit staring into the headlights of a very large truck.
June 25, 2025
Democracy and Populism one from Latin on from Greek. The latter one invented as the Blob and many MPs do not like Democracy much to mean the bit of democracy they think a vulgar as they do not like them. They like dire things like the EU, vastly high taxes, big government, rigged markets, net zero, road blocking, HS2, lockdowns, dangerous vaccines – voters rarely do.
June 19, 2025
Indeed. It would be popular to have controlled high skill only immigration, police who deter real crime, low simple taxes, cheap on demand energy, roads that are not blocked, free speech, non rigged markets in healthcare, housing, energy, schools, a sensible legal system… Who is pandering to populism? Certainly not the Tories since Major, Cameron through the Sunak and certainly not Starmer.
Starmer says his biggest error is not explaining his message sufficiently well. Hardly all his policies are totally wrong, anti-growth and everyone can see this very clearly. He need a working compass!
June 19, 2025
Allison Pearson in a Tweet today is surely right, I have zero faith in this inquiry it will be an expensive farce as the Covid one clearly is.
I can’t believe the Government thinks it can exempt police, social workers, councillors, civil servants from the national rape-gangs inquiry.
Those are exactly the people who covered up and excused the rapists.
At this rate, there will be a popular revolt.
Reply The government has said the Enquiry can follow the evidence including against Councillors, senior officials etc
June 19, 2025
Well we shall see. I had extremely low expectation of Starmer and they are now even lower still.
Stephen Cushion from his academic studies of the media thinks the answer to the rise of populism is to get broadcast journalists to fact check more things. He praises BBC Verify…
Praise for BBC verify? The BBC are wrong on nearly everything especially the EU, the net harm vaccines, the size of the state and Net Zero. BBC verify is a sick joke that tries to justify these daft positions. It is even more deluded than their Justin Rowlatt (another PPE graduate).
June 19, 2025
Michael Gove was on GB News this morning confirming the info that Cummings has already released into the public domain that senior Officials in Whitehall wanted the Rotherham Rape Gang scandal covered up. He made it perfectly clear to any Whitehall Official who might decide to unfortunately “lose” appropriate records that he has kept his own 🙂
He also said he expected to be called to give evidence at the Inquiry.
Two-Tier is going to find it very difficult to restrict it to the “chosen few” who will obfuscate and play down the scale of the abuse that, predominantly went on in Labour Constituencies/Council Fiefdoms.
June 19, 2025
Let us hope but then look at the appalling sick joke that is the Covid inquiry! Who will they appoint to chair it and what will the terms of reference be? I have little doubt it will ne another sick joke.
June 19, 2025
Two-Tier’s only discernible policy is to do a handbrake U-Turn on every policy which he (and his Student Union Ministers) announced only a few months earlier.
June 19, 2025
Pandering to Populism or Pandering to Democracy? Latin or Greek take you pick – Not much pandering in evidence – one vote every five years for candidates (who rarely even try to do as they promise anyway) gives almost zero real influence to the Demos or Populous. And this is before the unelected blob, the lawyers and the international organisations, the EU, ECHR, WHO… The only pandering I see is a few empty words – no real action.
June 19, 2025
“Populism” seems to be the many bits of “democracy” that the people want but the Blob hates.
Thinks like – Low simple taxes, smaller government, police that actually deter and tackle real crime, scrapping the absurd net zero agenda, less government, freedom of speech, freedom of choice, public services that work, not having dangerous vaccines or lockdowns pushed at them, sensible border controls…
June 19, 2025
Wind only supplying 3% today and we’re Importing 18% of demand. Gas and nuclear providing 48%.
June 19, 2025
So there plan is working ? I mean isn’t this current energy situation the goal and policies of both tory and labour …..as soon as they capped fracking shale gas I realised that they don’t want easy abunant cheap energy for the populas
June 19, 2025
Indeed and the sun is shining and demand for electricity is rather low as it is light for long hours and is warm too.
June 25, 2025
I read today that Singapore have created a roof panel that works of rain water. Now that seems like a good invention for the uk and more reliable in some parts than sunshine!
June 19, 2025
Populist speech as we know it should be challenged by vigorous Fact Checking and moderation by referees with fines imposed on the release of misinformation – especially if the claims from those seeking public office are so off the wall as to be telling downright lies then that individual of party should be hauled before the courts. If is not good enough to admit later that the 350 on the side of a bus worked out OK so all Is well now – the intent at the that time was wrong and in this case has arguably done incalculable damage.
Reply The £350 m was always right.The Remain forecasts of recession, job losses and collapse of trade were always wrong.
June 19, 2025
@Sayagain. You can’t trust the “factcheckers”.
It’s well documented that they are set up and funded by people with an agenda. The BBC and other MSM organisations want to squash their growing competition in the non-legacy media. Politicians and bureacracies want to silence their critics. Pharma and other companies want to do the same, or to ensure their messages have wider circulation than any counter-narrative.
Take a look at some of Mike Benz’ work on X, exposing many of the “fact checking” organisations as being completed compromised and untrustworthy. One such, on this analysis, is the BBC’s “Trusted News Initiative”.
June 19, 2025
So who fact checks the fact checkers!
June 19, 2025
“fines imposed on the release of misinformation” What things like “the Covid Vaccines are safe and effective”, “the Covid Vaccines were unequivocally safe”, all the claims that support the lunacy of “Net Zero” all the claims that renewable make energy cheaper, the “weapons on mass destruction lies”…, the Labour and Tory claims that the attacks on Non Doms and on Private School fees would raise money, claim that the Reeves Budget was a “budget for Growth” the BBC, most MPs, Miliband… would all be bankrupted in no time!
June 19, 2025
“The so-called facts used by the establishment are often wrong or simply are lies.”
That made my day. Someone of our kind host’s experience and stature spelling it out. If only more people with influence were as brutally honest!
June 19, 2025
One of the most recent and egregious: “Safe and Effective.”
My usual rule is that any three word strapline parroted by someone from the Westminster Uni-Party is a blatant lie.
June 19, 2025
If politician are moving their lips it is usually either untrue, a lie or something so obviously true it is not even worth saying – things like “we want an efficient, cost effective, clean, reliable, safe, sustainable… transport system”. Did anyone want an inefficient, cost ineffective, dirty, unreliable, unsafe and unsustainable transport system?
June 19, 2025
Thank you for the link and heads up. The problem for the old media, post the rise of the internet, social media and the rest is they lost control of the narrative. On many topics it is now possible to do your own research, go to the sources direct to discover what they say, not the medias selective reporting of what they say they say. Just about everyone has an agenda they pursue – the reason they publish. It is easier now to spot the selective reporting as they seek to frame the debate. The narrative about Brexit, at the time and now, offers abundant examples as you demonstrate.
June 19, 2025
O,
True to an extent. However, doing your own research can be hampered if sites are blocked.
With RT.com, the Russian English language site you get a message ‘server can’t be found’. You have to put the site into a paywall remover first to view it. Many will be unaware of this, or give up after the initial message.
It is not so easy to spot topics that the media choose to ignore either. You have to be looking for such information in the first place.
Also there are a multitude of alternative sites – but many of those are not very good either, or they have a particular axe to grind, or a number of ‘clicks’ to target.
June 19, 2025
Oldtimer, your reflection of how it is in the selective news outlets is spot on. More concerning for me, is the impact AI search preferences is having and will have increasingly in the future. When we google we are being presented not with a search result of all the options on a piece of history or story, we are presented with the preferred story by the search engine providers.
The next stage of this selective truth will be the altering of the actual facts by the AI protocol program to present its concept of what the search should provide.
We live in troubling altering times.
June 19, 2025
I have come across that too. My approach is to keep asking questions, slicing and dicing to find inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
June 19, 2025
Yes, that is an option but the people looking for an answer without any awareness of the subject they are asking about will take what the AI programmer prefers to put out their.
Our only long term option is to look after and protect the written truth as printed in books and manuscripts. The written research studies will become prized possessions.
Keep a good library it will become the ultimate high value possession.
June 19, 2025
Not that easy to do some reseach on areas such as the rape gangs or on Covid Vaccine Safely as the Government and statistics offices are clearly hiding the breakdown of the statistics or not even collecting them in the UK! But plently of other countries are so the total disaster will all come out!
June 19, 2025
Donna’s definition of Populism: Policies of the ordinary people; by the ordinary people; for the ordinary people.
In other words, Democracy.
The Establishment, including the MSM, created a chimera of Democracy. We could vote for any of their approved Parties but the Establishment, including the MSM, would govern according to their Agenda.
They are furious because, finally, the ordinary people are pushing the Agenda and are taking (back) control.
I expect the book is interesting in the same way watching Channel Four News is interesting: so you can marvel at the arrogance, delusion and fury that they have lost the narrative.
June 19, 2025
If only the people were able to take back control! I see resistance on most subjects where I think I have some degree of finger on the pulse of the people….The former Establishment has extended down the levels of power in society and regularly shows how policies that are wanted by the masses are refused, delayed, lies promoted as facts … no wonder the undercurrent of ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ is prevalent throughout the population.
How big a step would be civil disorder?
June 19, 2025
For many decades, the media and governments have championed minorities at the expense of the majority.
What they forgot was that, in a democracy, the majority wins.
June 19, 2025
It may be indicative of the forces reigned against honest political activities but from the review in this diary entry I don’t think I ever want to support such a travesty.
It does however sound like another effort by the far-left to make less of so-called populism and the rising courage of people generally to be responsible for their own future.
Too long we have lived off the failed promises of politicians of all colours, with the rise of political awareness comes the conclusion that a democracy defined in centuries past no longer works adequately and with enough safeguards.
People now want more say in what happens politically because they don’t trust politicians any more. Now is the time to start planning how democracy can be made to work in this century, and we should start with reversing the changes Blair made to Parliament that were there to keep the executive in check.
Our leaders have far too much power to exercise – when you mix that with an establishment that works to it’s own rules and an excess of parliamentary socialism, it is vital we regulate who becomes an MP by establishing their level of rationality.
June 19, 2025
I don’t need to spend £14.95 to read about what I already know. I have eyes and a good memory. Politicians over the last few decades have destroyed our country, and I fear it can never recover. We have been, and continue to be, overwhelmed by people who don’t share our values or the love and continued prosperity of our country. We have been sold out by the very people we elected to care for Britain and the British people. They should hang their heads in shame.
June 19, 2025
Agreed. They took the most cohesive, settled, generally law-abiding and high trust society the world has ever known and deliberately set out to destroy it.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron
June 19, 2025
@Christine +1
June 19, 2025
The MSM is not trustworthy because it is riddled with official propaganda purveyed by jobbing journalists. People who want to understand the underlying facts and make their own judgments are well advised to study a multiplicity of sources beforehand. However, most people are content to accept a version of truthiness that accords with their Weltanschauung so for them state actors and states are immune from being judged on their actions.
June 19, 2025
By far the biggest lie being told by the Civil Service and the BBC is that we have a climate emergency which requires us to unilaterally sabotage our economy with Net Zero and submit ourselves to lower living standards and draconian restrictions. According to the Natural History Museum the planet was so warm 125,000 years ago (a mere 0.025% back towards the start of the Cambrian explosion) that “hippos wallowed in the River Thames and lions prowled where Trafalgar Square now stands.” The CO2 level then was at 280ppm compared to today’s 420ppm. It is clear that this much higher temperature than today did not lead to runaway boiling and the extinction of the planet as claimed by the climate alarmists for a temperature increase of just 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, a time which coincided with the Little Ice Age. The planet then cooled into an ice age which ended about 11,000 years ago. There have even been periods when the temprature has been higher since exiting the last ice age as evidenced by receding glaciers in BC/Canada revealing 7000 year old tree stumps. The Antarctic Vostok ice core data shows CO2 following temperature for the last 450,000 years when both temperature and CO2 have been at exceptionally low levels. There is no CO2 explanation for any of these temperature changes let alone an anthropogenic CO2 explanation.
June 19, 2025
The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s the stark warning from more than 60 of the world’s leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming.
Nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above levels of the late 1800s in a landmark agreement in 2015, with the aim of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change. But countries have continued to burn record amounts of coal, oil and gas and chop down carbon-rich forests – leaving that international goal in peril.
Climate change has already worsened many weather extremes – such as the UK’s 40C heat in July 2022 – and has rapidly raised global sea levels, threatening coastal communities.
“Things are all moving in the wrong direction,” said lead author Prof Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.
“We’re seeing some unprecedented changes and we’re also seeing the heating of the Earth and sea-level rise accelerating as well.”
But no name and shame ? Would the Prof tell us about the countries who are ‘dooming’ the Earth!
June 19, 2025
MT :
Table 12 in Chapter 12 of the IPCC Working Group 1 (“The Science)’s report shows no signals for climate change (precipitation, droughts and storms) other than some mild warming which UAH satelite data for the lower troposphere is 0.14 degrees C per decade. The same report quotes a warming of 1.2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 (P95). The ’40 degree record’ at RAF Coningsby on 19th July 2022’ lasted for just 1 minute (measured with a thermocouple) when when three typhoon jets were landing. Note that one third of Met Office sites do not exist and almost 80% of Met Office sites are WMO class 4 and 5 with 2 and 5 degree innacuracy respectively. So Met Office data cannot be relied upon for climate change.
June 19, 2025
A great many UK weather stations are categorised class 5 junk (ie not trusted readings) by the UN WMO …..what if the reading are wrong and our temperature hasn’t risen (who can you trust these days when we has a minister on the BBC was saying that most of the boat people are women & children)
June 19, 2025
Indeed even a doubling of CO2 would not cause any dangerous warming (See Prof. Graham Happer) and indeed the millions of other climate factors might well give overall cooling.
Also even if CO2 were a problem than exporting CO2 production and jobs does nothing world wide co-operation is not very likely as most countries have more sense that Ed Miliband does.
Furthermore when analysed properly the solutions pushed – heat pumps, electric vehicles, solar, wind, walking cycling, tidal, wave, hydro, public transport… do not even reduce CO2 much – if at all. EVs cause more CO2 as does burning imported wood at Drax.
June 19, 2025
Sorry Prof. WIlliam Happer!
June 19, 2025
From the Graun today “Climate misinformation – the term used by the report for both deliberate and inadvertent falsehoods – is of increasing concern. Last Thursday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised”.
Some of us might have to mug up on the visiting times at Pentonville.
June 20, 2025
Indeed! Will climate alarmist nutters like Miliband be given protected status not to be offended by having to face reality like other religions, racial groups etc.
June 19, 2025
Interesting insight.
Have either Tor Clark or Steven Cushion appeared on GBNews to debate their case?
June 19, 2025
David Starkey has pointed out that ‘populism’, from Latin, and ‘democracy’, from Greek, have the same basic meaning, yet are regarded these days to be in opposition.
One has to wonder at the source of this modern political polarisation.
According to American cyber analyst Mike Benz it originates with the CIA, who turned their Cold War regime-change tactics on their own people in 2016 after Trump and Brexit. If the polarity is manufactured thus – it may explain the apparent cognitive dissonance of so many of the leftist arguments.
June 19, 2025
Populism is the bits of Democracy that the Blob thinks are bad – most of it in fact!
June 19, 2025
489 criminals were smuggled into the UK the 17th; and escorted from the safe country of France…(late govt reporting)
June 19, 2025
Update
244 criminals were smuggled, into the UK yesterday 18th ; and escorted from the safe country of France…
June 19, 2025
‘A post truth age’ I am not in PR, but I deal with a lot of PR and Journalist people.
The World has moved on-line, some good, some bad. The undertow is that all media is funded by the advertiser. No one else pays the wages. Stories as that is what most offerings are, you could be forgiven for asking is it Jeffery Archer or a journalist in the front-line writing? Who knows, who at the media empire cares – the lines are blurred. The story writers rarely get to write their own headlines, that duty passes to marketing – it the headline that draws people in as it exposes them to the advertisers, the funders, the item for the most part has nothing to do with anything. The offering doesn’t even need to match the headline hence the phrase ‘click-bait’
In other words, the story ‘could’ be true, but we shouldn’t expect the headline to be.
June 19, 2025
Books, stories as the narrative
To many in the media and politics’ thought 1984 was their guide to a rosy future, they didn’t see it as a warning against morphing into today’s them and us two tier world.
Likewise, the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies could be a stand out piece of fiction if so many of those that have cornered the narrative didn’t turn it into a factual piece on good practice.
There are lots of promotion pieces, that on reflection just can’t be true that cover a wide range of sectors. A TV ad for a pre-paid cremation services manages to get 99% approval from those that have been cremated? that is permitted by OFCOM?
June 19, 2025
‘confidence in the legitimacy of news journalism?’ that is a contradiction. It was always assumed that journalists questioned things used facts, then presented facts not opinions.
The BBC has a service said to verify things – a good idea. But their fact checking is not of facts but offering an opposing opinion. Today (Thursday) they say they have verified that Iran has a nuclear facility that only the USA could attack. That infers they have checked that it is only the USA and no one else. No evidence is offered beyond the use of the words ‘could’ and is ‘considered’ Also the phrase ‘BBC Verify suggests the US could’
How is that fact checked, it is an opinion piece from story writers it is not journalism.
But the BBC did admit that the USA could only achieve their(the BBC’s) narrative by using the base at Diego Garcia. Then neglected to mention that 2TK the UK PM has arranged that the Mauritius government must be informed first and their permission sort before ever attempting such a secrete mission. Like 2TK the BBC isn’t thinking things through before making such pronouncements
June 19, 2025
I will buy the book you recommend today. I also suggest buying The Builder’s Stone, by Melanie Phillips, which dissects the failure of the West to stand up for its culture and standards.
Meanwhile, this dreadful Labour Government squanders money all over the place and the UK heads for bankruptcy.
Sir John, your site does not retain my name and email address, so I have to enter them each time. As a result, I occasionally can’t be bothered to post a comment. Maybe it affects others as well. But even if I don’t post, I read your article every day. Thank you for all the hard work you do to post daily.
June 19, 2025
off topic – but perhaps not?
Medway Council spent £100,000 in taking Romani Gypsy families (15 adults, 14 children) living at Wigmore park-and-ride car park to court. Medway Council sought to evict them after 18 months temporary agreement. The Canterbury County court ruled in favor of the families, stating the council’s attempt to evict them was a breach of human rights. The council expressed disappointment with the decision.
June 19, 2025
I wonder if they had become squatters in his house, the trial judge would take a different view of their human rights.
June 19, 2025
Oh Dear
June 19, 2025
The situation is that the old political parties have morphed into is populism itself. They are led by a religious style leadership whose aim first and foremost is to win the next election. In their minds this can only be done by disciplined disciples that tow the line a preach their mantra.
The party just removed, was because they stopped representing those that voted them and morphed into the same cabal as what was the opposition. They still don’t get it, this crowd now in office received just 20% support of the electorate and won power. They the other crowd lost because the deserted their supporters, most didn’t go elsewhere they were disenfranchised. With the opportunity to turn things around, pull in new blood what did the do? They stuck with those that had collective responsibility for their failure, they present the continuity of their failures as something those that they deserted would forget and vote for.
Any thought on working with those that empower and pay them has been confined to the trash can.
They can promise anything to get the vote knowing full well circumstances change and all implementation, reviews will be after the next election after the next. Today is just about control of thoughts. It’s a deceitful concept that has crept in and become embedded in our systems and structures. No one should be then surprised that all the ‘talking-heads’ now also called influencers that make a vast profit from being the ones in the limelight then also track the way the political class do and act.
As @Donna elsewhere here today infers, the need is for a democracy, government by the people for the people. As such I would ban political groups from being involved in the election process, start with basics. Candidates chosen and selected by those they with to represent not from some remote gang leader. At least then there is the chance that those elected will be going into Parliament to serve and represent their electorate, the Country
June 19, 2025
From the Telegraph
Headline ‘Trump approves Iran attack plans’
US president gives private instruction to military chiefs but ‘has not made a final decision’
What part of that is journalism? What part of that is a meaningful fact on anything?
Populism to sell advertising space?
I would guess there are many so-called World Leaders that have gone along with ‘What If’s’ for all situations. Then again if POTUS really did have a private conversation and the recipient made it ‘public’ their heads should roll (metaphorically speaking)
June 19, 2025
“He [John Curtice] points to low levels of turnout as well as unprecedented numbers voting for parties other than the traditional main three.”
The politicians have handed control over to the Civil Service, quangos, regulators, judiciary etc.. This is why major policies on Net Zero, immigration, EU membership, taxation etc. do not change when there is a change in the colour of a majority of MPs elected to Parliament and hence the cause of poor turnout. There used to be the joke that whoever you vote for the government always wins. Well, this is now the case as the Civil Service never changes. I would much rather see the permanent secretaries of Civil Service departments answering questions on the Sunday morning interviews than MPs.
June 19, 2025
Populism has become pejorative as a means of implying simplicity.
Politics is complex don’t you know.
What is not quite so complex is asking people to take responsibility for themselves and not expecting taxpayer cash to solve all ills.
June 19, 2025
Words matter and I have just heard on the BBC 1pm news that Iran still has the ability to “retaliate”. In popular language (from Israel) “Well you started it”.
June 19, 2025
We could not have had a better example of our betters in Parliament setting the agenda this last week :
The Assisted Dying bill has been supported by a majority of voters but fiercely resisted by those Liberal Lefties and others who think they know better than voters. They have delayed and attempted to water down the bill over many months in a concerted attempe to render it almost useless.
Yet his week, they have effectively legalised the murder of any unborn child on the whim of the mother with a single amendment to an unrelated bill with almost no debate.
June 20, 2025
The last statement has been discussed and agonised over for years. Going over it all again merely upsets thousands of people.
June 20, 2025
I am not particularly religious but I do not really agree with abortion, particularly after, say 10 weeks.
I won’t go over the arguments, but what happened last week was an abuse of parliament and a good government and Speaker would never have allowed it to happen.
I made the point here, not to upset anyone, but because late term abortion of viable babies now carries no penalty whatsoever. Stella Creasey and Co have rendering the practice, in my view legalised murder. It is no different from injecting an elderly person with a lethal injection without their agreement, something that the proponents of assisted dying would never condone.
For the record, I would vote for the Assisted Dying bill before Parliament today, because it has many safeguards.
Those who plotted to remove the penalties for late abortions have removed the few safeguards that unborn children had.
June 19, 2025
UK-US trade deal to be completed ‘very soon’, says PM.
….sounds a bit like maybe.
Britain was the first nation to agree a deal for lower tariffs from Donald Trump, but actual implementation of the deal has been delayed while details were finalised (in other words they are still sorting the mixed up papers that were dropped by Trump).