OOn last Sunday’s BBC Politics programme, presenter Laura Kuenssberg spoke to Energy Secretary Grant Shapps. On this occasion, Shapps came across as himself, rather than one of the many fake identities he used to inhabit when promoting his business on the Internet. I always find Shapps’ appearances as himself awkward, a bit like when Mike Yarwood used to say “and that’s me!” at the end of his impressionistic shows and then sing an old jazz standard in a strange American accent while squinting and waving his hands. Like Yarwood, Shapps himself seems more unlikely than the people he pretended to be.
Because to me Shapps will always be Michael Green. Or Sebastian Fox. Or, proving that Shapps is a pioneer of the now-common gender-fluidity, Corinne Stockheath, a name so mildly crazy that, I won’t tire of pointing out, nobody else had it. Always. Come on everyone! Sing!! “One Corinne Stockheath! There is only one Corinne Stockheath! One Corinne Stockheath! There is only one Corinne Stockheath!”
mild madness It seems that the name of a cruise covers a gang made up entirely of whatever Tory MP survives the Mexican standoff of this collapsing Tory government. And One Corinne Stockheath is the song they would play for the slow dance at the end of the night. Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey steps to the microphone to perform the spoken word section over Shapps’ gently undulating flamenco guitar and declares: “With the poor of the Earth I will share my fate. I like mountain streams better than the sea.” Is it them, Thérèse? Is it because they don’t have all those large quantities of human excrement that you’re responsible for floating around, Thérèse? Mild madness!
As Kuenssberg nodded like a toy bulldog on the back shelf of an economy family car, Shapps made all the usual decontextualized points: “Stop the boats”, “Jeremy Corbyn”, “Just Stop Oil”. And then he lied, of course, this time justifying the bare cronyism of liar Boris Johnson’s resignation honor roll, a document so bent and slippery it will be used as a bobsleigh track at the next Winter Olympics . Gordon Brown also had a list of resignation honors, it seems, according to the man of a thousand faces and a lawnmower. It was another example of conservatives using the standard Billy Bunter defense. “Boris Johnson didn’t steal your cake Jenkins and anyway Gordon Brown stole your cake too.”
There are dozens of liberal commentators on social media far better equipped than anyone at the BBC
Kuenssberg sat by Shapps’ lie in silence, either out of ignorance or compliance. But Gordon Brown didn’t have a resignation roll. He had a dissolution honor roll, honoring people from all sides, rather than honoring Tories who had eaten jello and ice cream in No 10 during lockdown, then spewed it up the walls in front of underpaid faces of the cleaners and tried to lie about it.
Fortunately, the wider British public was on hand to help the BBC it loves maintain its reputation for accuracy and impartial political coverage, with many political pundits calling to set the record straight. The wonder is that anyone interested in politics would still watch any BBC news coverage anyway. If you’re looking for unashamedly right-leaning political bias, GB News does it much better, and if you’re interested in facts and analysis, there are dozens of liberal social media commentators far better equipped for the job that no one on the BBC. And some of them make cool swear words too. And if you’re interested in the exact point where political passion boils over into a sort of comically furious desperation, there’s always James O’Brien on LBC. It can only be a form of cruelty, or masochism, that draws us closer to Kuenssberg, like sick voyeurs, wondering what kind of contortions she will contort herself this week to avoid open criticism of the Conservatives, a writhing limbo dancer under a tree clothes horse, each rung adorned with transcripts of Johnson’s well-documented lies.
Kuenssberg reacted with condescending condescension to those who called to help her out of the hole her ignorance of the issue she was discussing had allowed her to fall into, declaring on air: “For all the political champions of pub quizzes Grant Shapps said that Gordon Brown had a ‘resignation honor roll.’In fact, he had a ‘dissolution honor roll’, which actually gave awards to members of all political parties. We like to make nerds happy on a Sunday morning, so clarification is something you can entertain your friends and family with all day long.” Oooh! Someone needs to trade their duvet for a lighter tog!
Frankly, the audience deserves more than to be teased by Kuenssberg, whose pointless Sunday morning show title sequence makes her look like a real estate agent trying to sell a wealthy buyer a luxury home made out of doodles. The BBC’s failure to sustain the furlough campaign to tell its pre-Brexit lies was surely one of the factors that has now led the country to economic and environmental disaster, and a public broadcaster that did its job of question potential Prime Ministers properly. he would never have seen selfish liar Boris Johnson near the door of No 10, let alone attending an Abba party upstairs while hundreds of thousands died. supposedly If expecting the BBC to be fair and accurate makes me a nerd, then knit me a tank top, flash my NHS specs, sort my Dungeons & Dragons characters by hit point order, pour me some frothy real ale and number me nobly. among these nerds!
