Just got this from the pro-democracy organisation, who explain how it is that the various official watchdogs designed to protect democracy aren’t doing their job. They’re allowing Reet Snob (so appropriately named here by Brian Burden, I believe) and the rest of them to get away with an open admission that the Voter ID laws were gerrymandering.
‘Dear David,
We were all stunned by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s admission at NatCon last week: he confessed that voter ID was an attempt to “gerrymander” elections. At the very least, we expected an investigation from the relevant authorities.
However, Byline Times reporting this week shows that none of the watchdogs are going to investigate Mogg’s comments. The institutions tasked with holding MPs and political parties to account for their actions – the Electoral Commission, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, the Cabinet Office – are not going to do anything about it.
This is shocking news given the serious implications of Mogg’s comments. Mandatory voter ID was introduced when Mogg was still serving in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, putting him close to the policy’s conception and implementation. During May elections, at least 16,000 voters across 53 council areas were turned away at the polls – and more than 6,000 didn’t come back. It will only be more extreme during a General Election. Mogg’s “gerrymandering” scheme had real-world consequences, potentially even swinging certain close races.
So why is no one investigating? Apparently, arcane rules in Parliament mean that because Dawn Butler MP raised this issue in the House, the Standards Commissioner is reluctant to open an investigation. The Electoral Commission views the issue as outside of its remit, and the Cabinet Office has simply said, without giving a reason, that it does not plan to launch an inquiry.
In recent years, the enforcement powers, remit, and operational capacity of crucial watch dogs has been undermined by the government. Boris Johnson’s revisions to the ministerial code made it harder to enforce accountability on government officials. In the same bill that included Voter ID policies, the government reigned in the Electoral Commission’s powers, in addition to jeopardising its very independence. That’s not a coincidence.
What we’re seeing is the systematic removal of political guardrails. As this government looks to consolidate power and crush dissent, these “pesky” watch dogs become obstacles for them to overcome instead of critical safeguards to democracy.
Part of our call to fix democracy is giving watchdogs their teeth back. In a fair political system, admitting to an entire nation-wide strategy of gerrymandering would be, at the bare minimum, cause for investigation. Moreover, gerrymandering in itself is not even an illegal act – which goes to show how much work needs to be done to make a democracy that works for all of us.
We’re glad you’re with us on this important mission.
The Murdoch media has been running attack stories against the BBC for a long time focusing on the very high salaries enjoyed by star presenters like Gary Lineker. They’ve been joined by Tory politicians like Jacob Rees Mogg. This fortnight’s Private Eye for 10th May – 1st June 2023 neatly exposes the hypocrisy of Mogg and his gang by revealing the very handsome salaries and fees they get for presenting and appearing on their rancid, toxic programmes on GB News. The article runs
Jacob Rees-Mogg has previously queried the high salaries paid to BBC stars calling its presenters some of “the most well-off in our society” in a diatribe against the licence fee. Of course Rees-Mogg is himself now enjoying a very healthy media salary since he signed up to present a tedious weeknight evening show on GB News this spring, effectively becoming a part-time politician.
The latest register of MPs’ interest shows the ex-leader of the Commons earned just of £32,000 for 40 hours’ work on the show over just a few weeks. That equates to £802 an hour, and makes the already wealthy financier one of the best-paid MPs in terms of outside earnings.
GB News is a cash cow for Tory politicians. The latest register also shows it paid ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng £1,000 for a single interview. In addition, it shells out a £100,000 salary to the party’s deputy chairman Lee Anderson, as well as recently paying around £10,000 each to married Tory MPs Philip Davies and Esther McVey for their pisspoor co-presented weekend offering.
Meanwhile, parts of GB News continue to be a haven for conspiracy theories. Earlier this month, regulator Ofcom again found it in breach of broadcasting rules for an episode of the Mark Steyn programme last year when guest Naomi Wolf said the Covid-19 vaccine amounted to “mass murder”, comparable to the “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”. Executives have been told to go for a meeting with the regulator.
Despite the rap on the knuckles, GB News presenters show no sign of changing their crackpot ways. Last weekend Neil Oliver shared an image online of Bill Gates that featured the Microsoft founder holding vaccine vials while wearing symbols including a swastika and an Illuminati pyramid. Lovely!
While the vast salaries to MPs such as Rees-Mogg who aren’t very good at presenting might seem a waste of money, the political connections at least allow the channel to retain a veneer of respectability.’
Erm, not quite. One Labour MP has said that GB News presents two types of views on its programmes, the right and the far right. The head of Ofcom had an uncomfortable appearance before a Commons committee in which she was asked why the channel was allowed to break the rules against politicians presenting news programmes. One of the most notorious of these breaches was when one Tory MP interviewed Boris Johnson.
The channel was also in Private Eye last fortnight or so when it reported that GB News was in such dire financial straits that it was no longer paying guests appearing on their wretched programmes. Presumably the money saved helps to pay the inflated salaries of rich Tory presenters like Mogg. How very Conservative!
Ho ho! I’ve just caught a piece on the local news reporting that the pupils at a church school in Mogg’s constituency, Bath, have written to him inviting him to come to talk to them about environmental problems. I just caught the end of it, when one boy said the government wasn’t doing enough about it. He was particularly concerned about sewage in the water and that electric cars could be promoted more. A girl said that by 2050 the Houses of Parliament would be underwater, so it would affect politicians then. They were all word processing them on computers first before printing them out and mailing them off in hard copy. The teacher looked proud, and said they were all keen on finding ways to save the environment, like eating two vegetarian meals. This suggests that perhaps the teacher had been less than even-handed in her discussion of the issues. Mogg has replied that he’d be delighted to talk to the children and meet them in parliament, and looks forward to reading the letters when he gets them. It’s a gracious reply, but Mogg should watch out. Some of those children will almost certainly know more about the issues than he does. He should be prepared to be asked some very awkward questions. Some of us can remember what happened when Gove met some school sprogs. That ended up with a photo of him sitting glum and dejected in front of a class on the cover of Private Eye. Wah-hey! Let’s hope for a repeat.
Two of the proposals in the leaked Labour manifesto were bringing the voting age down to 16 and giving the vote to EU nationals. Starmer had said in an interview that it felt wrong, when knocking on doors, to deny voting rights to people who had been here, contributing to the economy, for 10, 20, 30 years. However, That Preston Journalist put up a piece last night saying that these policies had not gone down well with the public, and that Starmer was now already thinking of ditching them, if not the entire manifesto. The Depress has run a story today reporting that Starmer had issued a sort-of climb down after Michael Gove, the ‘Levelling-Up’ Secretary, had written to him asking why he wanted to give the supreme benefit of British citizenship, the right to vote, to people who weren’t British citizens. And, of course, there are also the usual allegations that Starmer was trying to rig elections and drag Britain back into the EU. The first of these allegations is massively hypocritical, of course, after Reet-Snob admitted that the Voter ID laws were the Tories’ own attempt at gerrymandering. Starmer has responded by saying that the proposal to enfranchise EU citizens wouldn’t be a priority, considering the more pressing problems of the economy. He said that none of his five missions concern electoral change. But Tory MPs have commented that he hasn’t repudiated the policy either.
I think they’re right. He hasn’t repudiated it. He’s given the same answer he gave about trans rights when he was asked about that issue during the controversy about it in Scotland. He said then that it wouldn’t be a priority under Labour, before going back to support them, or apparently support them later. And given the way he breaks promises like the Tories, you have no idea whether he’s serious about these policies or not.
I got this latest comment from the pro-democracy organisation about the National Conservatives’ conference earlier this afternoon. They make the point that their real views about democracy and transparency are shown by the way they stopped left-wing media organisations like Novara entrance, despite all their rhetoric about it. Other highlights included Reet Snob stating plainly that the Voter ID laws were all about gerrymandering and a speech by Cruella in which she went on about genitals. This last was dig at Starmer. Cruella said that she and Sunak knew that 100 per cent of women don’t have penises, unlike Starmer. Who, she joked, would stand as the trans candidate at the next election. Here’s the message
Dear David,
The National Conservativism (Nat-C) Conference kicked off yesterday, proving to be just as much of a weird, far-right cringe-fest as any of us could have anticipated. Despite one of the conference’s ostensible themes being “free speech”, they’ve shut their doors to journalists.
Once again, this clique of Conservatives is showing that their commitment to freedom of expression is ankle-deep. One of their core values crumbles to dust the moment anyone disagrees with them, in which case they become the delicate “snowflakes” they claim to detest.
Byline Times’ political editor Adam Bienkov, as well as the political correspondents from OpenDemocracy, Politics JOE, Novara Media and others, all had their press tickets rejected. It’s not hard to see what those publications have in common: they don’t share the extreme views of the conference and probably wouldn’t cover it favourably.
We shouldn’t be surprised that non-Conservative media is being barred from entry. This conference is a symbol of minority rule, a gathering of election deniers, theocrats, and billionaires’ mouthpieces. They’re becoming increasingly bold about rejecting democracy outright.
Here are some highlights from the conference so far that illustrate the point:
Jacob Rees Mogg openly acknowledged that voter ID laws were “gerrymandering” elections. He actually just admitted it.
US Senator JD Vance said that the US and UK Conservative movements are on “similar trajectories“. This from one of the people that tried to overturn the 2020 US election.
Douglas Murray said that just because Germany “mucked up” nationalism doesn’t mean the UK can’t give it another go.
Suella Braverman’s weird speech about genitalia and the need to arrest protestors – ironically interrupted by an Extinction Rebellion stunt.
They may call themselves “populists” and pretend to be representative of ordinary people, but it’s all just rhetorical sleight-of-hand. These are free-market fundamentalists, Christian nationalists, and conspiracy theorists – and thepublic at large is not behind them.
As the old adage from David Frum goes: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
We’re already there – the mask is now fully off. The only way to counter people like this is to force them to play the game fairly. Instead of letting them “gerrymander”, spread lies, and appeal to the worst elements of xenophobia and hate in Britain, we need to fix the system that has enabled them for far too long. We know that the general public rejects this kind of politics – we just need a system that reflects that.
A more democratic, fairer politics would prevent the rise of fascism in Britain. We’re running out of time to build it. As a young person in Britain, my future depends on us changing this trajectory – there’s nothing for me in the UK under Nat-C rule.
That’s why I signed up to Open Britain’s mission and why I would encourage everyone who shares my concerns to do so too. We know the majority of people in this country are on our side. By working together, we can and will see off this creeping authoritarianism and set free Britain.
I’m not a member of Open Britain, but I’m leaving the link here for anyone who is so alarmed by this swing to the extreme right that they do want to join the organisation.
I’ve seen a couple of videos about them on YouTube already. In one of them, various attendees were claiming that it was for small ‘c’ conservatives and that while some Conservatives were there, most of the attendees didn’t belong to the party. Hmmm. The problem is, some of the speakers were very definitely big ‘C’ Tories, like Rees Mogg and Braverman. They also had the former MEP Daniel Hannan, dubbed by Guy Debord’s Cat as ‘the Lyin’ King’, a hard-line Brexiteer who’d like to sell off the NHS. Politics Joe put up a video in which they interviewed some of the people going to the conference outside. One of them was an older man, who lamented the lack of sexual restraint in modern society and said quite plainly that if a man fathered a child, he had a duty to support it. Now I didn’t watch all of the video, and perhaps this gent said something far more extreme later on, but I don’t think what he said was particularly controversial. I think the traditional attitude among intellectuals at least until the middle of the last century was that restraint was one of the key elements of civilisation. It was what made us civilised beings instead of animals. And sexual restraint, finding appropriate channels for sexuality like marriage was an intrinsic part of this. As for men supporting their children, again I can’t see anything wrong or controversial about it. Not on its own, unless it’s coupled with more extreme policies, like attacks on gay marriage. But I don’t doubt that as a whole, the Nat Cons are indeed a deeply unpleasant, highly reactionary movement.
The Groaniad has run a rather entertaining piece today. They’ve printed letters from their readers commenting on how local Tories are trying to distance themselves from their party ahead of the council elections. They’re describing themselves as ‘local Conservative’ or ‘Independent Conservative’ or some other formulation in order to disguise the fact that they are, actually, members of the Tory party. The letters run
‘Alison Hallum and Brian Sandall (Letters, 25 April and 26 April) might be interested to know that Conservatives are also disappearing in Milton Keynes. None of their leaflets mention the party, and they’re on the nomination list as “Local Conservatives”. This is a clear attempt at distancing themselves from the governing party, though it appears well-coordinated by campaign headquarters. Friends tell me they are seeing similar in many other areas. Paul Norris Olney, Buckinghamshire
In our Tory stronghold we have had no posters or literature from the party. We note from our local paper, the Hereford Times, that they are styling themselves as “Local Conservatives”. Have they even here despaired of their own government? Margaret and Les Barclay Leominster, Herefordshire
Here in Malvern Link we have a candidate who is standing as a Conservative for the district council, and at the same time as an independent candidate for the town council. How he will be able to ignore his Conservative principles (I use the word loosely) if elected to the town council, I do not know. Martyn Wilson Malvern Link, Worcestershire
In our Bath ward we have not seen any signs of boards, literature or canvassing from prospective Tory councillors. Bill Hutty Bath‘
I came across reports of this happening elsewhere in the country a few months ago. It seems that many local Conservatives are massively embarrassed at the performance of the national party, and so are trying to play their links down in order to get some votes at the local elections. Except for the Tories in Bath, who just seem to have given up. Perhaps the proximity to Jacob Reet Snob has had such an effect on the city that the Tories there simply despair of getting in.
GB News and the Depress have reported that London mayor Sadiq Khan is facing calls to sack his advisor on Black culture, Kemi Olivia Alemoru. Alemoru’s the former editor of Gal-Dem, and now folded magazine for women and non-binary people of colour. So what were these terribly tweets that she made that have caused such offence? Well, she called Johnson ‘the Grim Reaper’ and wondered why he hadn’t been attacked as others had got a slap for less. She also called the Tory government ‘murderers’ and said “They have stood by idly and let people’s families die taking too much time to make decisions that could save lives, using money to make their friends rich rather than make our pandemic infrastructure robust or useful.” The GB News article about this quotes a Conservative member of the London Assembly, Neil Garratt, as saying “It is quite wrong for Sadiq Khan to appoint someone with extreme and hateful views to a role meant to bring Londoners together”.
Really? ‘Cause I don’t see anything factually incorrect in what she has said. Johnson dithered about imposing the Covid lockdown, listening to stupid eugenicist wibblings about herd immunity instead of what real epidemiologists were telling him. As a result, people caught Covid and died. On other issues, Johnson showed himself far less interested in the actual business of government and more in publicity shots and campaigning. He seemed to be going off to Checkers every weekend during the Covid crisis. And unlike other PMs during national emergencies, he never attended the COBRA meeting about it.
But why stop with Covid? The work capability tests and benefit sanctions have led to untold deaths of the disabled and unemployed, who were thrown off benefits for trivial or utterly fabricated reasons. I remember that c. 2015 people were putting up on their blogs faces of the hundreds who had died, some of them in appalling deprivation and hunger. This included a mentally ill young Black man, who I think had been unable to get himself the insulin he needed for his diabetes. There was also a case of a young woman, who committed suicide with her baby, out of despair after she had her benefit cut off, and an elderly couple who starved to death. As for that vaunted privatisation, that Sunak thinks has done so much for the NHS, a study found that instead it had caused 350+ unnecessary deaths. Quite apart from the chaos caused by massive funding cuts, that left us unable to cope with the pandemic unlike our continental cousins. And Black Brits have been particularly hit by the Tories’ wretched austerity, so Alemoru has undoubtedly seen the greater harm Tories policies have had on the Black community. I despise Critical Race Theory, but Alemoru has a particular right to be angry as a woman of colour.
But could there be anything else that riles the Tories? Well, yes. She’s an admirer of Jeremy Corbyn. She’s supposed to have tweets: A vocal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, who is rumoured to be pondering throwing his hat in the ring for the London mayor role, Alemoru once tweeted at 1am in November 2019: “I love Corbyn so much”, followed by a post in April 2020 that read: “CORBYN CAN NEVER GO HE LIVES IN MA HEART”. She isn’t alone. Corbyn is an inspiring speaker and people wanted and supported his socialist political agenda. Which is why he was smeared as a Commie, Trotskyite and anti-Semite, and his supporters purged from the Labour party.
And she also committed the heinous sin of dissing Keir Starmer, calling him a scab.
GB News states that she tweeted ‘No one can tell me that @Keir Starmer is not a Tory plant. He’s too s*** to be trying! He’s not trying to be anything to anyone for any reason. I wish he broke the law with that curry.”
She later referred to Starmer as a “SCAB” for sacking Labour MP Sam Tarry from the Shadow Cabinet for joining a strike picket line.’
I’ve thought exactly the same thing about Starmer. He and the Blairites are Thatcherite infiltrators. Various right-wing members of the NEC were on Conservative forums. One of them was even more vitriolic about Corbyn and the left than the Tories. And yes, I do question his support for the strikers. I’ve heard various explanations that, of course the Labour front bench supports the pickets and Sam Tarry shouldn’t have joined the line for various reasons. But Tarry’s sacking still looks like the actions of a Tory scab trying to ingratiate himself with the right.
Back to her comments about killing Johnson, she made it clear that she wasn’t calling for anyone to do it, just wondering why they hadn’t. So she was inciting people to commit a crime, merely expressing an opinion about our massively incompetent, corrupt and egotistical PM.
When reading, remember that GB News is effectively becoming a mouthpiece of the Tory party. It now employs a number of Tory MPs as presenters, including Jacob Reet Snob, as well as Nigel Farage, former UKIP caudillo. I think I’ve also heard rumours that they want to give a post as presenter to Anne Widdecombe and Liz Truss.
When it comes to GB News, the remarks of a Labour MP while grilling the head of Ofcom is right: they offer a choice of opinions – right or far right.’
Just got this from the pro-democracy organisation. I’ve seen various arch-Tory types puffing National Conservatism, and this goes some way to explaining just who’s involved in it and where it’s coming from. It’s basically nationalistic Conservatism of the Trumpian populist variety. The name rings alarm bells, because I think the National Conservatives were one of the small, Volkisch parties who ended up being swallowed by the Nazis during their rise to power. The mention of Daniel Hannan is a particular red flag. He was an MEP for Dorset and would dearly love to privatise the NHS. Pretty much like the rest of the Tories, but he was outspoken about it. As for Gove, Mogg and Cruella, definitely ‘No thanks!’. It’s the Tory hard right, who really haven’t learnt that Tufton Street theories are massively unworkable and damn near wrecked us. Quite apart from the lofty intellectualism of Darren Grimes.
As for Christian Nationalism, it’s bad politics and bad theology. Nothing does more to put people off religion and promote religious scepticism than its political imposition. After the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, religious scepticism grew, and in the various national churches throughout Europe there was a keen desire to avoid fanaticism and a return to religious bloodshed. Furthermore, to prevent continued religious fractures and conflict, theologians taught that only God can tell who is a true believer and who isn’t, and so it isn’t in the power of earthly governments or churches to say which of their flock is a true Christian or not.
You can see the same process of religious dissatisfaction occurring in the Muslim world. A Pew poll a few years ago found that the majority of Iranians are now no longer Muslim, with the largest bloc of non-Muslims atheists. I think that’s almost certainly a reaction to over forty years of the Islamic theocracy. I’ve also read that atheism is also spreading in the Arab countries. That wouldn’t surprise me, given the horrors of ISIS and similar movements. Religious belief has also declined among Americans, and I think that’s a reaction to entrance into politics of the religious right under Reagan. There are very, very good reasons for separating church and state.
‘Dear David,
For the British right wing, the “sunlit uplands” are always just over the horizon…if we would just entrust everything we hold dear to them one more time. Brexit. Johnsonism. The Truss catastrobudget. All trailed as the “one thing Britain needs to get us back on track.” Not one of them has worked.
And now they’re at it again with ‘National Conservatism’.
At first sight, National Conservatism might appear to be just the latest episode in a tired old series. But we need to keep an especially close eye on this one because it comes turbocharged with a boatload of Trump-scented dark dollars and a sharp line in Christian fundamentalism. It’s Farage-Johnson-style Brexit zealotry on steroids.
As announced in this Telegraph piece by Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Frost, the first “NatCon” event features a who’s-who of far-right gremlins. The list of speakers includes US Republican Senator J.D. Vance – who sought to overturn the 2020 US election – GB News’ on-and-off-presenter Darren Grimes, Tufton Street’s pseudo-intellectual Daniel Hannan, and, of course, Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, and Mogg himself. It’s a smorgasbord of radical libertarians, anti-woke crusaders, and straight-up election deniers.
Their website promotes Italian “neo-fascist” president Giorgia Miloni, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and a litany of books and essays promoting such delights as Christian Nationalism and the importance of male-dominated societies. Several featured titles would challenge an experienced librarian not to put them on the ‘racist literature’ shelf.
None of this is all that new, but NatCon shows that the US and UK far-right networks are now cosier than ever and readying themselves to steal power they could not win fairly at the ballot box. As Byline Timesreported yesterday, the intricate links between Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Boris Johnson are still being revealed, uncovering a well-funded and highly organised global right-wing network.
Their fundamental goal is to promote an unpopular agenda that benefits only society’s most privileged elite, using asylum seekers, minorities, college students, protestors, and anyone else who stands in their way as cannon fodder. The problem isn’t merely that they have a regressive and outdated vision for the country. It’s that they’re willing to hijack democracy in order to achieve it.
This is what we’re up against. A unified bloc of deep-pocketed and well-connected figures focussed on the goals of self-enrichment and destruction of our democratic institutions. We’ve seen in the US what can happen when these people are given the reins: a privileged minority rules with impunity, cutting their own taxes, giving hand-outs to their friends, and reopening long-settled social issues such as abortion and racial equality. We have already had enough of that agenda. We can’t allow more of it to flood in.
Those of us who believe in democracy and social progress, whatever colour rosette we favour, must come together to fight any attempt by this Nat-C movement to slide into power through some back door in the Tory Party.
This is a wake-up call if ever there was one. Let’s keep a close eye on this new movement. But let’s also work double-time to make our democracy work for ordinary people. Let’s take the dark money out of politics. Let’s reign in big tech’s disinformation industry. Let’s shine a light on the Tufton Street ghouls that freely walk the corridors of power these days. Let’s take every chance we get to defend, strengthen and renew our democracy because, of all the ways a society might have to free itself from fascism, using democracy to stop it at the front door is probably the only one that bears thinking about.
Okay, I’ve tried to keep this light and fun as it’s the Easter Holiday, but there’s no way I can let this go past. GB News has put up yet another video in which their mouthpiece, Nana Akua, demands that the NHS be scrapped. Because it’s the No Help Service. She’s done this before, as have a number of other right-wing YouTubers, such as Alex Belfield, now enjoying a long and well-earned holiday at His Majesty’s Pleasure. GB News is, of course, a right-wing news broadcaster that seems to cheerfully break Ofcom’s rules against politicians presenting the news. At present they’ve got something like four Tory MPs as presenters, including Jacob Rees-Mogg. The head of Ofcom tried to excuse GB News’ breach of the rules by saying that the Tories weren’t actually presenting news programmes. No, they just comment on them and interview other Tory politicians. I can’t remember who, but one of them interviewed Johnson when he was prime minister. One Labour MP grilling the Ofcom head told her that the station broadcast two types of news, right and far right. As Nigel Farage is also one of their long-term presenters, he’s not wrong.
What you are seeing here is the Tory strategy in action. They’ve cut and cut the NHS until it’s in crisis, and their friends in the media are telling us all that it’s not because of Tory mismanagement. No! It’s because of the nature of the NHS itself, and everything would be better if it was privatised. Well, it would be for the top earners who don’t want their tax money to go on the welfare state and for those able to afford private health insurance. Such as possible Nana Akua. But for everyone else, it would be a disaster. Still, those private healthcare companies have to make a profit somewhere.
GB News itself is in dire financial straits. It has been forced to cut down on the amounts paid for guests. Apart from star presenters like Farage, there aren’t many people watching their material. In fact, if I remember correctly, some of them have zero viewers at all. And there is at least one person aiming to close it down. And if they continue to push for the privatisation of the NHS, that’ll be no bad thing.
Here’s an interesting little video courtesy of the Scots newspaper, The National. And it shows up the hypocrisy of the Tory screams for Gary Lineker to be sacked because of his tweet about the Channel migrants. But there isn’t similar outrage over Tory MPs like Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg getting jobs as news presenters on GB News. In this clip, SNP poltico John Nicholson asks the head of Ofcom why they are allowed to take such posts, explicitly breaking Ofcom’s own guidelines. She’s clearly uncomfortable, squirming and giving replies denying that they’re not news programmes. Nicholson has no truck with this, and points out that Dorries, for example, was interviewing Boris Johnson about politics, not about sport. So once again you can see where the real bias is, and the double standards.
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