His ridiculous story about the EU only allowing straight bananas and his subsequent lack of apology but saying that it made a good story was enough to tell me just how he manipulates the truth for his own ends.
Freedland is right on the ball there, couldn’t have put it better myself.
Very catchy.
He has always been a liar and a fraud and always will be. His concept of responsibility, to say nothing of reality, is laughable. And yet, he is the PM. HOW ???
I’m stunned at how he can do so much harm and still look in the mirror every morning. I couldn’t do a fraction of what he has done without being racked with guilt and self loathing.
And this says a lot about the people who put him there.
It says something about Tory voters, true - but I think it also says a lot about UK media. Voters only really know what the media tell them. Most people don’t spend much time seeking out the truth - many don’t have much time - often they only catch the main headlines - which generally toe the Tory line.
Freedland himself, by the way, is almost as notoriously unreliable as Johnson.
Most famously he originated, or passed on unchecked, a key story in the Labour antisemitism shenanigans - claiming that a Labour candidate had previously been fined for antisemitism. In reality, somebody else with the same name had been fined. The story was read by millions on The Guardian website, Twitter, etc - it was retweeted 600,000 times!
After the damage was done, when the lie was revealed, Freedland eventually issued a mealy-mouthed apology, referring to ‘earlier reports’ (there were none other than his own), putting the blame on a ‘source’, and not admitting clearly that he simply had not checked the facts.
Well worth reading this alternative view. I don’t entirely agree with it, but it at least has the merit of challenging the centrist consensus that the public sphere is an unconstrained space for the expression of opinions, like the mythical ‘free market’ in which everybody has perfect information. The simile is not accidental!
" Laura Kuenssberg is still doing her determined best to act as media bodyguard”
I agree with that accusation, and if Paul Dacre becomes chairman of Ofcom it may as well be renamed British Broadcasting Conservatives.
Do I get the impression that you don’t like him???
Indeed.
One of the reasons the media tend to toe the conservative line:
Does anybody ever listen to Hard Talk with Stephen Sackur et al?
He has some very interesting interviewees but, like Channel 4, the government is afraid, very afraid.
I remember when it was first launched in the mid nineties, I used to watch it when we lived in Dubai. I enjoyed it then but the few episodes I’ve stumbled on since seemed to lack the old bite.
I listen on World Service.
I watched them on BBC World. In fact the only station we had in Dubai (not being big TV viewers then) was BBC World.
Hartlepool loves him voted in 1st Tory MP in 56 years
Indeed, though the only reason that Hartlepool wasn’t Blue anyway was that UKIP and the Brexit Party split the right wing vote for the past two elections allowing Labour to hold on.
Now that all of the RW vote is behind the Tories it was an easy win.
Plus Labour are floundering.
The only real hope now is that the Tories eventually collapse under the weight of their own corruption.