The BBC’s political reporters have continued their onslaught on the premiership of Boris Johnson. But despite their strategy of talking up parliamentary plans for a pork pie rebellion, there’s no doubt that today’s bravura performance saved Boris’s bacon, at least for now.
Political principle?
With solid cabinet support for the Prime Minister, no resignations by ministers or parliamentary private secretaries, and despite the defection to Labour of one obscure backbencher for reasons largely of political self-preservation [Christian Wakeford’s majority, the BBC failed to mention, was only 402], Boris Johnson has bought the time he needs credibly to ask that the political village in Westminster waits for the party-gate report from senior civil servant, Sue Gray, before deciding his future.
The unhelpful dig from David Davis MP that Boris should resign now was more than matched by solid support from political heavyweights like Sir Edward Leigh weighing in to buttress the bullish Boris Johnson.
The respite could, of course, prove temporary, but increasingly Boris is looking confident that he can survive Sue Gray’s findings, and his announcement of the ending of many covid restrictions can only boost his previously embattled position. He’s not going anywhere soon.
BBC funding the real motive
The agenda that is perhaps driving some of the BBC’s political reporters has less to do with parties during the pandemic, but rather more to do with the announcement by Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, that the BBC’s licence fee funding model is approaching its sell-by date. Even the high profile Radio 4 presenter, Nick Robinson, the elite among the elite of political BBC reporters, has been reduced to trying to defend the BBC’s constant criticism of the Prime Minister by taking the unusual step of writing to the Daily Telegraph to justify the corporation’s distortion of the news agenda.
The last time the BBC’s sneering media elite began circling for the political blood of a Prime Minister whose determination to deliver Brexit offended their woke, left-leaning, EU-remainer principles, I wrote that whilst Boris Johnson’s political career may yet end in failure and his party may in time turn on him, that day is not today and that time is still not now.
By Chris Whitehouse, Chair, Whitehouse Communications