Posted on 11/02/2003 7:41:03 PM PST by Pikamax
BBC have it in for Howard
THE BBC is cross. How dare the bedraggled, contemptible Tory Party rally round a viable leader without first indulging in a self-destructive bloodbath?
And what nerve to choose a man who upset Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman seven years ago.
The Beeb’s sneering anti-Tory machine went into overdrive the moment Michael Howard emerged as Iain Duncan Smith’s as-yet undisputed successor.
On Thursday, Radio 4’s The World Tonight carried a disgraceful 90-second clip which amounted to outright character assassination.
The Labour Party could not have scripted this undiluted bile more skilfully.
It rehashed the "something of the night" allegation which has baffled everyone who knows Michael Howard.
There was no more light or shade in this tirade than there was in Ann Widdecombe’s original charge.
Yesterday’s Broadcasting House on Radio 4 re-ran the 1997 Paxman interview with Howard like an incantation against the devil, and set it to choral music.
Perhaps more legitimately, the satirical Have I Got News for You? on BBC1 ran some of that same interview in which Paxman repeatedly asked Howard about his role in the resignation of jails boss Derek Lewis.
On Radio 4’s Today programme John Humphrys demanded to know how the Tories could justify picking Howard after rejecting him in 1997.
And Radio 4’s The World This Weekend picked up the refrain by asking: "If Howard was no good six years ago, how can he be top of the pops today?"
Interview ... Paxman
The truth is that Michael Howard hasn’t changed - except by mellowing a little.
It is the Tories who have changed, returning from seven years in the wilderness to start thinking about the voters they abandoned years ago.
The party had lost its nerve, dumped the principles which kept it in power for most of the last century and fallen for the myth that Tony Blair was invincible.
Its rattled MPs, beguiled by political correctness, toyed with the idea that state spending is good for its own sake and put the rights of criminals ahead of their victims.
They offered cringing apologies for the tough decisions which handed Tony an economy which has kept Labour afloat, despite grotesque failures on almost every front.
Now, in an outbreak of common sense, they have stopped playing the fool and begun acting like grown-ups.
They have seen that even Tony Blair can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
They may one day regain power and introduce policies which improve life for the vast majority of voters.
But you won’t hear the BBC endlessly replaying Tony Blair saying "I’m an honest kind of guy" as Labour pocketed a million quid from F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone.
You will not hear the BBC list Gordon Brown’s stealth taxes. Or the truth about illegal immigration. Or the scandal of our transport system.
Nor will you hear the BBC raise objections to the vast flood of YOUR money squandered on complex tax credits and social engineering which, one day, will have to be painfully unravelled.
That’s a job Michael Howard must make the Tories do for themselves.
What's he talking about? They almost certainly did script it.
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