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In the recent collection, Pandering to Populism? Journalism in a Post-truth Age (to which I am a contributor), Richard Tait, a former editor-in-chief at ITN and one of the book’s editors, states that: “How to report populism fairly and accurately under unprecedented political and economic pressure will be journalism’s challenge for the next ten years and beyond. Some may indeed decide that pandering to populism is the best way to survive the turbulent years ahead, but if they do so, they are betraying journalism’s duty to speak truth to power.”
Warnings about normalising the far-right in general, and Reform in particular, have also been sounded by veteran media commentator Raymond Snoddy, another of the book’s editors, who in his columns in The Media Leader has described Reform as “anything but normal” and accused the BBC of helping to create the public persona of Nigel Farage long before he even became an MP.
He also argues that “if Reform is claiming, as it is, to be a party capable of governing this country, then the media must subject it to the same kind of scrutiny applied to Labour or the Conservatives. Such scrutiny must be applied to the past record of those associated with Reform, its current policies and its performance where it is in power, such as the ten local authorities where it is now in control.”
BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to Win Over Reform Voters by Changing News and Drama Output
The Director General Tim Davie and other executives discussed altering BBC “story selection” in order to secure the “trust” of supporters of Nigel Farage’s party
As a resident of Kent, whose County Council is now being scrutinised by a Doge-like team of “young tech entrepreneurs” (one of whom resigned as I wrote this article) and which, with a third of upcoming Council meetings already cancelled, appears to be grinding to a juddering (and doubtless costly) halt, it’s impossible to disagree.
However, the only problem is that significant sections of the media – that is The Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun, Spectator and GB News – habitually apply remarkably little scrutiny to the Conservative party, and are particularly sympathetic to and uncritical of its most right-wing elements. Scrutiny, if you can call bitter and relentless hostility by that name, is reserved overwhelmingly for Labour.
Disavowal and Denial
And it is in these media that we find not only the barest scrutiny of Reform but pronounced hostility to anyone having the temerity to describe the party as far-right. Of course, “far-right”, like “populist”, can all too easily be used as a catch-all term, but as Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar demonstrate in their Little Black Book of the Populist Right, it is perfectly possible to employ such terms while at the same time distinguishing between different types of far-right populist party currently operating in Europe.
However, this and the detailed work of people like Cas Mudde and organisations such as HOPE not hate is no barrier to the likes of Fraser Nelson in the Spectator, 10 June 2024, accusing critics of these kinds of parties of talking “nonsense” by positing the existence of “one ‘far right’ or radical-right lump”. And what’s his solution? To propose instead the equally lump-like but usefully euphemistic “new right”.
In the specific case of Reform, its pronounced xenophobia, its hostility to the very concept of human rights, its opposition to many of the tenets of liberal democracy – particularly the separation of powers, and not least its loathing of the judiciary – as well as its fraudulent posing as an “anti-establishment” party and “the voice of the people”, all mark it out as a far-right populist party (although in actuality a company limited by guarantee), however much Richard Tice may rail against the label.