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In November, I was invited to speak to Cambridge University’s Varsity newspaper about why Byline Times is a necessary addition to Britain’s media landscape. That evening, I discussed values – something the students said no one ever mentioned when it comes to journalism.
Why do we become journalists? What are the ideals that propel us into a career so competitive and precarious? And who are the journalists we go on to become? What are the realities that test, and compromise, those ideals – leaving our internal compasses pointing in the wrong, or unexpected, directions?
To illustrate the point, I used the example of that revered spectacle of the media-political classes: the Spectator party – attended by a number of big-name ‘liberal democratic’ journalists and politicians, who would no doubt profess not to share the same politics as the right-leaning magazine, home to the likes of Douglas Murray.
Would there ever be an incentive for these journalists and politicians to stop attending the parties? I was asked by one of the Cambridge students. I responded by saying that I didn’t think so unless fundamental, structural, reform of the media took place. After all, these journalists weren’t ‘bad people’ for enjoying the Spectator’s hospitality – they were simply schmoozing with friends. It’s a social thing. A club.
Truly living one’s values and doing what is comfortable are different decisions, was my concluding comment to the students that evening.
It is a moment that has come back to me at several points in the weeks that have followed – during which the prospect of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK becoming a defining force in British politics is now being widely discussed as inevitable, while the Labour Government appears to have its head in the sand about the rolling political revolution that is happening all around us, too big to grasp.
In the middle of all this, a number of those journalists and Labour ministers I had been alluding to in Cambridge found time to attend the Spectator’s annual parliamentarian awards.
Farage picked up best newcomer.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting (the “guest of honour”) took a public dig at his colleague Louise Haigh, who had recently resigned as Transport Secretary.
Meanwhile, the magazine’s owner Sir Paul Marshall – also the funder of GB News – enjoyed the festivities alongside Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner (“politician of the year”), Labour MP Jess Phillips, Sky News Political Editor Beth Rigby, The News Agents’ Emily Maitlis, ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston, and BBC Politics Live presenter Jo Coburn.
All very cosy. But at what cost?
I am proud to be a young female editor of colour in the British media landscape. This matters. Why? Because to be clear: the prospect of a more extreme politics coming to Britain via the ballot box is a very real, visceral, concern of mine. I do not have the privilege not to be concerned by this and, by leading a newspaper like Byline Times, I am clear about my values in this regard.
Days before this year’s General Election, Reform activists were caught on camera referring to Rishi Sunak as a “p*ki” – comments responded to by Farage with the remark: “They’re just talking like ordinary folk.” During the riots that then swept the country after the 4 July poll, a number of Reform members’ Facebook groups were rife with support for the far-right extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as ‘Tommy Robinson’).
Recent weeks have seen reports emerge that Trump advisor and the world’s richest tech-media baron, Elon Musk, wants to donate millions to Farage to make his movement mainstream in the UK. After the riots against migrants and Muslims, the X (formerly Twitter) owner openly claimed on his platform that civil war was “inevitable” in this country because of its multicultural, multi-ethnic nature. Imagine how this threat of violence sounds to millions of non-white Brits like myself?
Added to this, Tory journalist Tim Montgomerie; Rael Braverman, husband of Suella; businessman Nick Candy; and former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns have all defected to Reform.
Our ‘liberal democratic’ political-media class needs to wake up.
While they are comfortable attending Spectator parties, pontificating on podcasts, going on tour, and offering hot takes, the country risks sleepwalking into a dangerous abyss. And not everyone will have the privilege to be shielded from the worst elements of this.
It is only by getting uncomfortable – by making truly considered choices – that the established journalists in our liberal democracy can help protect that liberal democracy, and that our ‘liberal democratic’ politicians can help counter, rather than contribute to, the consequences of allowing a more radical and extreme political culture to take root in Britain.
Much of life is navigating the tension between our ideals and the realities that face us; with advancing our own personal interests and those of the greater good. Some of us accept this existential challenge in our human existence and try our best to act accordingly. Others turn a blind eye.
We all end up living with the result.
Hardeep Matharu is the Editor-in-Chief of Byline Times