A bit of a rant about media power.

I have been known to go on a bit about the power of the media in shaping politics. Here I go again. Others, people more in the public eye than I am, appear to agree with me. Yesterday I came across a tweet, or something, from Owen Jones:

“The BBC made Nigel Farage. He'd be nothing without them. And now the media is going to normalise the new far right of Steve Bannon and Tommy Robinson.”

I’ve been saying that about Farage for years!

Also, I am reading John O”Farrell’s memoir, “Things can only get worse”, in which I came across this comment about Boris Johnson; “Boris was catapulted to national celebrity status after he appeared on “Have I Got News for You”; without which, it is my firm belief that he would never have won the selection to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London”.

John O’Farrell continues: “Somewhere out in the universe there is an alternative version of modern British history in which Boris Johnson was never invited onto a satirical panel show, never became Mayor of London, and never wielded any influence in a knife-edge vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union”.

As he says, “it’s one thing for members of the Bullingdon Club to have a laugh smashing up a restaurant and then walking away. It’s quite another to do it with the European Union”. Which is what some of those who caused the referendum to happen appear to have done, getting themselves a nice living making speeches here and there.

The media have a big responsibility. Free speech is great but the media give publicity to those they choose.

I also wonder if it’s a particularly British thing. One aspect of our much-vaunted sense of humour is the ability to make fun of ourselves and our institutions. And so we give credence to fools who appear on the television. Does it happen in other countries to the same extent?

Perhaps we don’t take our politics seriously until it’s too late. And suddenly we find that quite nonsensical ideas and people have become acceptable in the political arena.

Hence the Labour Party antisemitism stuff.

“Corbyn must step up and disown those who tolerate antisemitism” was the headline to an article by Michael Segalov.

It’s all very well but do we really know that there are actually Labour people really “tolerating antisemitism”?

Mr Segalov writes:
“Jeremy Corbyn is not known to sit in silence: to confront the controversial has been part of his mission since the day he entered the political fray. It was by giving voice and action to his convictions that he has remained so often on the right side of history; it was his decades of campaigning that provided the framework for Labour’s progressive platform today. It’s his resolve that inspired me and hundreds of thousands of others to join a movement, but I fear that today it’s being hidden away.

On antisemitism, Labour needs strong and decisive leadership. Not because it’s rampant in the party, but because it has become a distraction that is refusing to go away. The reality is that there are a smattering of Labour members among the half a million who are explicitly antisemitic, and a small yet vocal minority who are blind to the prejudice that is very much there.”

But oddly, there is barely a mention in the media of the antisemitism that must also exist in the Conservative party. Or is that the respectable face of antisemitism?