Boris-baiting

This was part of BBC political correspondent Chris Mason's introduction to a short interview with Boris on the BBC News Channel at 10:10 this morning:

Mr Johnson has a curious relationship with Turkey. His great-grandfather was a controversial journalist and politician killed in Turkey, and a figure sufficiently controversial that his name, if you like, is still mentioned in conversation in Turkey now. And just a couple of weeks ago, before Mr Johnson took up his post here at the Foreign Office, he won an 'offensive poetry' competition run by the Spectator magazine in which he penned a verse about the current president which, to put it mildly, was less than complimentary. Anyway, within the last half an hour of so Mr Johnson has made a statement. We'll play it to you now.

Gavin Esler on Boris's "silly" and "juvenile" poem

More Boris, and more Gavin Esler...

Here's a question Gavin put to Turkish journalist Guney Yildez on today's Dateline London:

Guney, I just wondered how...He wrote a pretty juvenile poem which won a prize which said things about President Erdogan which, I think, on reflection he might think are rather silly. I mean, does that matter to people in Turkey?

Let's just recall that Boris's winning poem was meant to be juvenile. That's what Douglas Murray of the Spectator specifically asked for - and he didn't ask for it for childish reasons. He was being deadly serious.

newspapers and Gavin Esler on Boris's "silly" and "juvenile" poemnewspapers

More Boris, and more Gavin Esler...

Here's a question Gavin put to Turkish journalist Guney Yildez on today's Dateline London:

Guney, I just wondered how...He wrote a pretty juvenile poem which won a prize which said things about President Erdogan which, I think, on reflection he might think are rather silly. I mean, does that matter to people in Turkey?

Let's just recall that Boris's winning poem was meant to be juvenile. That's what Douglas Murray of the Spectator specifically asked for - and he didn't ask for it for childish reasons. He was being deadly serious. 

It was a sincere protest at the prosecution of a German comedian (in Germany) at the whim of the increasingly despotic and paranoid Erdogan and that German comedian, Jan B�hmermann, had posted his own deliberately juvenile poem to protest against Erdogan's suppression of free speech - which was the very thing that got him prosecuted (as he suspected it might).

I say 'Bravo to Boris!' for standing up for free speech and opposing an Islamist abuser of democracy and his bid to silence critics even beyond his own country's borders.

For Gavin Esler and Evan Davis (and others), however, this seems to be simply about Big Bad Boris gratuitously insulting Johnny Foreigner - and why he's such a dodgy choice for foreign secretary. 

Surely they must know (as senior journalists) that Boris was helping the Spectator to make a serious and increasingly vital point here?


P.S. Dateline London was full of guests saying that Brexit was a terrible thing for the UK.

Steve Richards of the Independent, Benedicte Paviot of France 24 and Suzanne Lynch of the Irish Times all made such points in all three of the programme's discussions (on Turkey, Nice and Mrs May).

Only the Turkish journalist kept his counsel on the matter.

newspapers and Boris-baitingnewspapers

This was part of BBC political correspondent Chris Mason's introduction to a short interview with Boris on the BBC News Channel at 10:10 this morning:

Mr Johnson has a curious relationship with Turkey. His great-grandfather was a controversial journalist and politician killed in Turkey, and a figure sufficiently controversial that his name, if you like, is still mentioned in conversation in Turkey now. And just a couple of weeks ago, before Mr Johnson took up his post here at the Foreign Office, he won an 'offensive poetry' competition run by the Spectator magazine in which he penned a verse about the current president which, to put it mildly, was less than complimentary. Anyway, within the last half an hour of so Mr Johnson has made a statement. We'll play it to you now.

And here's the closing part of that interview with Boris:

Chris Mason: Yes, two and a half million Brits go to Turkey every year. What specifically are you guys saying in the Foreign Office to British tourists right now? And, secondary to that, what do you say to those people who would say, 'Are you the person to be offering this advice given that just a few weeks ago you wrote that poem about the Turkish president?'? 

Boris Johnson: I think the thing you can do is look at the travel advice and if I've anything more to say we'll be out later on. Thank you. 

...immediately followed by Chris's comment:

You get an insight there into Mr Johnson's reticence to engage with my specific question about his remarks a matter of weeks ago about Turkey's president given that, as he said, just a couple of hours ago he was on the phone to a member of the Turkish government. 

Shortly after, Gavin Esler took up the same theme with him:

Gavin Esler: Just a quick question before you go, Chris. The point that you alluded to earlier about something that Mr Johnson wrote in.a poem about the Turkish president. We've seen, in just a couple of days since he's been in the Foreign Office, booed at the French embassy. We know he's written things about various American people, President Putin and so on. Are we going to see serious events round the world with people actually asking him about things that he's written in the past which he may now find a bit awkward? 

Chris Mason: Yeah. I think we are. And in many ways my question to him was an illustration of that. I think he will hope - and the new British prime minister Theresa May will hope - that there's a finite number of occasions on which that kind of thing will happen because whilst Boris Johnson is well known for the colourful nature of his language and the colourful nature of his photo-opportunities there is a finite, albeit relatively well-stocked series of, frankly, insults that he has levelled at various world leaders or aspiring world leaders over the last few years. I think in his early weeks and months as foreign secretary, yes, he will be confronted with those remarks because there's no disputing he said them and he now carries a serious office of state here in the UK. I hope that Mrs May will hope that in the medium term the advantage he can bring to this office is akin to what he was seen by his supporters to be very good at doing when he was the Mayor of London - in other words to be a colourful ambassador for the city. They will hope in time he can be useful, successful and colourful ambassador for the UK. But with that will come scrutiny about what he said in the past. 

Gavin Esler: Indeed. Chris, thanks very much. Chris Mason there, thank you.

And an hour later, Chris was back at it, framing Boris's statement/interview in much the same way as before (at 11:12):

I then caught up with him. He gave a statement a couple of hours later, shortly after 9:30 our time, in which I asked him for his reaction to events in Turkey but pressed him as well about his connections to Turkey. His great-grandfather was a prominent politician and journalist in Turkey, and a controversial one too - sufficiently controversial that his name is still controversial to this day. And also a poem that Boris Johnson had written about the Turkish president just a matter of weeks ago that won a competition in the Spectator magazine - a magazine he used it edit. It was  an 'offensive poetry' competition run that he won and it was derogatory about the president of Turkey in the strongest possible terms. You'll hear my question about that shortly. Firstly his reaction to events overnight.

And after a reprise of the interview/statement, he added:

And there is, as I was hinting there, plenty more advice if you are planning a journey to Turkey or you're in Turkey now and trying to get out on the Foreign Office's website. Plenty more advice but not a keenness from Mr Johnson to answer my question about his poem. 

This kind of thing has been going on since his appointment, of course.

Stretching from Newsnight on the night of his appointment through Today, The World at One, PM, BBC One's News at Six and News at Ten and The World Tonight the following day, the BBC certainly hasn't been reluctant to raise such concerns - at length. They all gave us a 'little list' of Boris's 'colourful language'. 

I don't recall any of them giving us the full context of Boris's 'offensive' Erdogan poem (as a protest against the decision, made at the Turkish government's request, to prosecute a German comedian for insulting the Turkish president in the German courts).

Was this inevitable? And how long will the BBC keep on doing it? 

newspapers and The Age of Aquarius passesnewspapers

It seems I was also premature (around four weeks ago) in giving credit to Dateline London for markedly improving in recent months as regards balance on its panels. Since then it's slipped back sharply into its old ways, with both last week's edition and this week's edition being especially unbalanced over the issues of EU referendum and immigration. 

Last week we had two Guardian writers, Polly Toynbee and Nesrine Malik, plus Greg Katz of the Associated Press and the BBC's Dmitry Shishkin; this week we had Greek leftist Maria Margaronis and Portuguese leftist Eunice Goes, plus Stryker McGuire and Ned Temko. 

The discussions on that subject - and more generally on immigration - from these overwhelmingly left-leaning panels have been something to behold: an absolute outpouring of mutual agreement about why Brexit would be a bad thing and why immigration is a good thing. This week's discussion even involved two guests (Maria Margaronis and Stryker McGuire) explicitly stating that they all agree on the issues (with presenter Shaun Ley rightly distancing himself from that comment!) 

The panels could hardly have been more unbalanced.

For a flavour of the discussion, here's a BBC-on-BBC exchange from last week's edition between Dmitry Shiskin, digital development editor for BBC World Service (a panellist) and Gavin Esler (presenting) (beginning at 11:00):

Dmitry Shiskin: Well, this topic is very close to me personally because I came to this country 16 years ago, having got a work permit from the BBC because Britain couldn't find a Russian speaker to do the Russian broadcasts. So that's one example. Another example would be a Russian physicist working at Manchester University becoming a Nobel Peace Prize...Nobel Physics Prize winner. He wouldn't have come to the country a few years ago because the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme was closed by that time. So I think you're right in terms of saying, yes, highly skilled are needed everywhere but the question is: How many Brits are living abroad and how many of them are qualified to stay in Spain for example? 

Gavin Esler: Well, one of our colleagues from El Pais, the Spanish paper, told me that..estimates differ, but he says that Spanish estimates are that 800,000 British people are living in Spain, many of whom are older and are, as he put it, seen as "a drain on our health service". 

Dmitry Shiskin: Wouldn't have qualified. And the second point is that I come from a very humanist approach to this. I think modern society should be about the flow of ideas and the flow of people and everything else, and potentially we can talk tactics but strategically. I think the world is a connected place...

Is that impartial? 

I see someone has complained about yesterday's programme already:

newspapers and It's the End of the Age of Aquariusnewspapers

Alas, alas! It didn't turn out to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius after all. Today's Dateline London reverted to its old ways. 

All four of its invited guests (Abdel Bari Atwan, Agnes Poirier, Michael Goldfarb and Yasmin Alibhai Brown) were left-wingers (of various hues). Again.

So, yielding to despair perhaps, I now think I must say: "I don't think I'll ever live to see the day when the programme invites four right-wingers to make up its panel. Bari's big, bushy moustache, even more than Hell, will have to freeze over before that ever happens."

That said, I still enjoyed it. Here's why (if you care):

The discussion about Brazil, the World Cup, those doctors, the WHO and the Zika virus found the programme's two most annoying guests, YAB and Bari, squaring up to each other (which was entertaining if not edifying). YAB gently mocked Bari for being a conspiracy theorist. Bari's friend Gavin Esler then gently mocked her back when she (without realising it) began sounding like a conspiracy theorist for the other side of the argument. What larks!

And, being Dateline, the closing segment was all about that ghastly Donald Trump and how poor Hillary might best deal with him in debates. (I think I've caught its general tone by describing it like that). 

In a week where concerns about possible serious legal problems for Hillary hit centre stage for a wee while (even - to some, small degree - in the BBC's reporting, briefly), those legal difficulties weren't even mentioned in passing. It was all about that nasty, nasty Mr. Trump and how Hillary might perform against him in debate. Agnes P was bullish about Hillary's abilities; the rest less so. 

Oddly, the usually loquacious Bari kept quiet for the most part during the traditional BBC Ten Minute Hate against the Republican presidential hopeful until entering late on, oddly, to compare The Donald to Hillary. The odd thing is that he did so favourably to The Donald. Bari's point? He's got personality; she hasn't. 

What was that all about? Bari's admiration for strong, male rulers with impressive heads of hair/impressive moustaches might, perhaps, have been coming out again...

...but, of course, being Bari, it's also perfectly possible that he sees Mr. Trump as less solidly pro-Israel (seeming) than Mrs. Clinton. 

The most interesting section for me, however, was the central section on Libya and the Mediterranean migrant crisis. 

Everyone agreed (and who can blame them?) that regime change there (courtesy of Mr. Cameron and M. Sarkozy, with backseat driving from Mr. Obama) was a big mistake. 

Bari blamed the West for everything. YAB blamed the West too. Agnes raised her elegant French eyebrows towards both of them, whilst conceding they might have a point. And Michael Goldfarb (ever the defender of President Obama) defended President Obama. 

So far so predictable, but...

(1) Bari told us that 3 million Libyans are now refugees in Egypt and Tunisia. As the internet has told told me that Libya has a small 6 million-or-so population, that's a heck of a lot of Libyans fleeing next door. I didn't know that (if it's true). 

(b) Yasmin Alibhai Brown pre-declared that she was going to give an "emotional" rant - and duly did so, railing against wicked West for failing to help the bulk of the Libyan population which, she said, was fleeing en masse across the Med out of Libya. Her fellow guests - and even Gavin Esler - forcefully point out to her, in response, that very few Libyans were actually crossing the Med. (They were moving sideways, so to speak, into Egypt and Tunisia.) It's mostly sub-Saharan/Horn of African people who are making that crossing, they said. YAB, looking as if she realised she'd been well-and-truly fisked, gave up on her point (and, for some strange reason, that made me smile.)

(c) Michael Goldfarb, in trying to counter YAB's fallacious assertions about those crossing the Med from Libya, instead put the 'they are desperate, poor Africans seeking a better life' point about those sub-Saharan/Horn of African folk. That morning's Today (just after 7.30), to its credit, had shown, however, that Michael G is wrong. Those huge numbers of sub-Saharan/Horn of African folk aren't, by and large, the poor of their respective countries. They are the much-better-off of those countries (those with enough money - a lot of money! - to make the journey). Some of them are coming, said the Today 'experts', just to experience the thrill of the bright lights of Western Europe....and to his credit, Gavin Esler very briefly alluded to part of that point in response on Dateline today (without embarrassing Mr. Goldfarb).

And that's that. (Not the best way to end a post perhaps, but it's all I've got).