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October 2021Majestic Fury & Moral Flippancy
Exclusive to print for a month, Peter Oborne shares his observations of the political-media class. For his latest diary, subscribe to the December digital edition
Majestic Fury
IT IS TEMPTING TO DISMISS BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell as a courtier journalist, but his steely integrity puts political reporters to shame. His anger on TV after being misled by Buckingham Palace about the Queen’s health was magnificent: “We were led to believe on Wednesday that the Queen was resting at Windsor Castle. As we were being told that, and relaying it to our viewers and newspapers to their readers, in fact she was in hospital.”
This principled denunciation of Buckingham Palace deceit raises troubling questions about why political reporters do not follow suit. For the past two years, the parliamentary lobby has been repeatedly misled by Boris Johnson and Downing Street on every major issue from the economy and the Coronavirus to Brexit. One of these misleading statements involved Boris Johnson’s health. In a case directly comparable with Buckingham Palace deceit about the Queen, Downing Street told reporters last April that the PM was still receiving his boxes in hospital, while insisting his Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill was “fine”. In fact, the Cabinet Secretary too had the virus, and we later learnt that Johnson was too ill to receive boxes.
I have never seen Witchell’s BBC counterparts at Westminster uttering anything resembling even a whimper of protest at Downing Street whoppers. (In their defence, the same applies to the majority of their colleagues in the parliamentary lobby). This has them complicit in what amounts to a conspiracy of deceit against the British people.
Meanwhile, hats off to Nicholas Witchell. Is it too much to hope that he might become the next political editor?
Listen and Learn
AFTER I BECAME POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT of the Evening Standard a very long time ago, a family friend invited me to lunch with our local MP, Sir Denis Walters. I found him dull, disliked what I regarded as his conventional views, and escaped as quickly as I could. After Sir Denis died this month, I read his obituaries and learnt that, as a teenager, he worked – very bravely – for the Italian resistance during World War Two. The obituarist put down his failure to advance further in politics to pro-European opinions.
There’s a lesson here, especially valuable for young reporters: just because a contact has interesting opinions and can give you snippets of information does not make them worthwhile. Don’t be in a hurry. Listen. You might learn some truths which really matter.
This is also a lesson for life itself: everyone has a story to tell. I wish I had taken the wonderful opportunity I was granted to get to know Sir Denis, and now it is too late.
Ready to Shute
A FILM OF SOUTHERN WATER PUMPING RAW SEWAGE into Langstone Harbour went viral when it was shown last month, and was widely seen as fresh evidence of the depravity of Conservative environmental policies. My mother was unconvinced by this report, presenting evidence that this is one national mishap for which Boris Johnson cannot be blamed. She was brought up in Langstone harbour before World War Two, and recalls sewage being dumped into the sea back then.
When my grandfather, a naval officer, went off to fight in the war, the family home at Langstone was let to the novelist Nevile Shute. Shute is, I think, unread today – but I have devoured every one of his books. An aeronautical engineer by profession, he wrote about ordinary, middle class people: bank managers, doctors, accountants, engineers like himself. He compounded this error (for those who seek literary celebrity) by writing in a simple, unpretentious way and being easy to read. He made the further mistake of celebrating virtues such as moral courage, simple heroism and basic decency – none of which impress the teachers of English literature who make or break reputations. I urge those who have never read Nevile Shute to do so at once, starting out with that tear-jerking wartime romance A Town Like Alice.
Darkness Lurking
MOLLY MULREADY, A FORMER FOREIGN OFFICE LAWYER – whose insights have appeared previously in this newspaper – has given a macabre insight into what Boris Johnson is really like as a human being. In an interview with the outstanding new Declassified website, Mulready – who worked for Johnson when he was Foreign Secretary – reveals that he was “very casual and jokey when we would go in to talk to him about arms in Saudi Arabia”, adding that in briefings about Yemen “he would just like joke around and waste everybody’s time”. Yet, these were literally deadly serious conversations. Britain was (and remains) at the heart of the Saudi bombing campaign which has killed and maimed thousands of civilians. As Penholder for Yemen at the United Nations Security Council, the UK had a special responsibility.
There is a chilling pattern of moral flippancy here. The genocide of Rohingya Muslims took place while Johnson was at the Foreign Office. Britain was penholder for Myanmar at the UN Security Council, yet Johnson didn’t even call in the Myanmar ambassador for a dressing down, while his Foreign Office actually stood up for the Myanmar Government in the Commons.
The Prime Minister is on record as saying “all they have to do is clear the dead bodies away” to make the Libyan city of Sirte. Johnson’s ‘let the bodies pile high’ remark at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, though denied by Downing Street, feels horribly credible to me.
Johnson’s readiness to jeopardise peace in Northern Ireland also fits into this pattern. Beneath the Prime Minister’s jokey and clownish exterior, I am coming to believe there lurks a monster.
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