By Kathy Gyngell,THE CONSERVATIVE WOMAN – June 17, 2024
LAST week I promised (to huge reader endorsement) that until the broadcasters treated Reform UK and Nigel Farage fairly – without bias and reflecting the strength of his party’s support in the country I would ‘balance’ our coverage of him in his favour.
When I wrote that, I knew the BBC and rest of the ‘mainstream’ channels were congenitally incapable of according him that democratic respect. I knew this because with David Keighley, director of News-watch, we’ve tracked the extraordinary editorial bias against him, encapsulated by Patrick O’Flynn here, but that we monitored back in his UKIP days and from the 1999 EU Parliament elections onwards. Then he was not only consigned to the margins of the schedules but openly sneered at by the BBC’s main news and current affairs presenters. It was a bias that carried on through to his Brexit Party days, in a continuing mistreatment and demonising of him by the BBC described here by David.
That is why it is highly unlikely any of the channels will cover his speech on Saturday in Frinton-on-Sea fairly, if at all, let alone comment on his quite unique (at this point of UK history) powers of oratory and command of his subject that outshines any other politician. No notes, no autocue, just Nigel in command and totally engaging! No wonder, despite the broadcasters’ best efforts, as Matthew Goodwin notes, he is cutting through.
See for yourself. Sit back and enjoy!
The British Libertarian right has made a terrible mistake, from a “tactical” point of view, by backing Nigel Farage in this election. He had earlier said he would stay out of the election. He is a shrewd politician, and he knew that he could only play a “spoiler ” rol;e in the election, taking votes away from the Cnservatives, but winning few if any seats for his party. That is because of Britain’s “winner take all” voting system, a party that comes in second or third all over the country, but first in only one or two constituences will win only one or two seats. According to the polls, that is what is almost certain to happen with thee British “snap election” is held on Juky 4. The libertarian conservatives should instead have run candidates in the Conservative Party’s internal elections to select their candidates for the general election. That might have resulted in a large bloc of libertarian, genuinely conservative MPs. That won’t happen now because of the libertarian conservatives supporting the Reform party. The libertarians have followed their hearts, not their heads,