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Leo McKinstry
How Andrew Marr’s hatchet job on Nigel Farage proves the BBC is a propaganda machine for the elite
The Brexit Party leader blasted the BBC journalist yesterday, during what Farage called 'the most ridiculous interview ever'
THE meteoric rise of the Brexit Party proves increasing numbers of people are fed up with the fashionable values of the ruling elite and its cheerleaders.
As voters prepare to express their fury at our useless politicians in the European elections next week, Nigel Farage is challenging the very basis of the discredited traditional order.
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His party has soared in polls, with new figures showing that 34 per cent of voters back it.
Nowhere is the terror of the establishment felt more keenly that in the corridors of the BBC, the lavishly funded state broadcaster which has long acted as a propaganda machine for the creed of political correctness and the Left.
So desperate times call for desperate measures.
Yesterday, in a blatant attempt to turn back the Brexit party’s tide, the BBC called on its interviewer Andrew Marr to perform a hatchet job on Farage.
Marr in turn dredged up a long list of quotes from the past, with the aim of exposing Farage as a dangerous extremist.
Interviews should, of course, be robust and it is the duty of television hosts to question politicians closely about their policies. And there's no denying that some of the views Farage aired when he was leader of UKIP were questionable.
But this was not a hard-hitting exchange, but rather a clear attempt at character assassination. The aim was not to enlighten, only to destroy.
The BBC are disastrously out of touch
Yet Marr’s effort backfired disastrously - not only because Farage is one of the most experienced, eloquent campaigners in Britain, but he was able to give as good as he got.
“This is the most ridiculous interview ever,” he declared. But more importantly, Marr’s whole line of questioning just showed how disastrously out of touch the BBC really is.
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Acting like the high priest of the liberal political class, Marr obviously felt that he could demolish Farage by pointing to the Brexit leaders’ controversial views on subjects like Syria, NHS treatment for foreigners, climate change and mass immigration.
But Farage’s common sense responses were far more in line with public opinion than Marr’s left-wing piety.
When Farage said that the NHS should be for British people, a cheer must have gone up from households throughout the land.
Marr’s performance can only have added fuel to the Farage insurgency.
Mouthpiece for metropolitan chattering classes
Today, it is the BBC in the dock for its lack of balance, not the Brexit party.
Marr himself once admitted that the BBC is wholly unrepresentative of the mainstream British public, describing the Corporation as “a publicly funded organisation with an abnormally large proportion of young people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared to the population at large.”
This structure, he confessed, “creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC.” He certainly proved the point yesterday.
Indeed, for decades the BBC has been the mouthpiece for the metropolitan chattering classes. Marr, as a left-leaning journalist, fits perfectly into this culture.
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If the tables had been turned, and yesterday Farage had been able to highlight some episodes from his interrogator’s past, he could have pointed out that Marr in his youth was a “Maoist” who once wrote to the Chinese embassy to order boxes of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, so he could distribute copies to his fellow pupils at high elite public school of Fettes.
Farage might also have mentioned Marr’s disdain for political freedom.
Marr’s intolerance was reflected in a chilling article he wrote for the Guardian in 1999 about anti-racism:
"The final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress.
"It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain ‘natural’ beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off.”
There speaks the voice of the true authoritarian.
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Elite crusade found everywhere
That is how the BBC really sees its role: to stamp out certain ideas and reshape the public consciousness to match the outlook of the elite.
This crusade can be found everywhere, such as the enthusiasm for open borders, the obsession with cultural diversity and the hysteria over climate change.
So an internal briefing for BBC reporters states explicitly that there is no call for impartiality on the subject.
“As climate change is happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate,” says the note.
Similarly, on Brexit, one recent study found that two thirds of the 297 panellists who appeared on the Radio 4 flagship discussion show Any Questions between 2016 and 2017 were Remainers.
Nor is there any openness about the social revolution brought about by immigration, running at over 600,000 new arrivals every year.
“I was fully aware of the immigration taboo. We were guilty of not encouraging serious debate on the subject,” recalled the renowned BBC presenter John Sergeant.
Facts less important than tales of woe
Another BBC legend, the newsreader Peter Sissons, revealed that during his time it was left-wing papers like the Guardian and the Independent that set the news agenda.
“By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are the Guardian and the Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories and for inspiration on which items to cover,” he said.
That explains why there is such disproportionate attention given to the hand-wringing narrative of Tory economic misery, demonstrated in endless news items about public sector cuts and benefits reform.
In one particularly disgraceful example, Radio 4 featured a headteacher of a girls school in south-west London, who claimed she had to clean the toilets because of brutal budget cuts.
“It’s just phenomenal the amount of cuts in schools on an everyday basis,” she moaned.
If the BBC had checked, it would have found that this headteacher had just enjoyed a pay rise of at least £10,000, while her school’s cleaning budget had increased by 90 per cent.
The school had also benefited from a recent £15 million “educational development grant.”
most read in opinion
But the facts are less important to the BBC than the tale of woe inflicted by the political right.
The attitudes infuses so much of what the BBC does, whether it be drama or even comedy.
But at last, thanks to Farage, an alternative is now being heard. And the antics of Marr and his fellow Beeb cronies will not silence him.