We’re out of touch with ordinary, ‘ghastly’ Britons, says ex-BBC chief: Leaked email says it ‘ignores and despises’ millions because they do not embrace liberal views
June 27, 2016 in News by RBN Staff
Source: Daily Mail
- Ex-BBC chief said Corporation ‘ignores and despises’ millions of Britons
- This is because they do not embrace liberal views of the elite, he said
- BBC was said to be ‘bewildered’ about how to respond to their concerns
The BBC ‘ignores and despises’ millions of Britons because they do not embrace the liberal views of a metropolitan elite, a leaked memo has revealed.
The Corporation was said to be ‘completely bewildered’ about how to respond to the concerns of ‘ghastly’ ordinary people.
There would be no end to the issues facing the broadcaster until the ‘London bubble’ had burst, said a report by David Cowling, former head of the BBC’s political research unit.
Fury at being overlooked for so long has led to vast numbers of Britons – many casting a ballot for the first time – to vote to quit the EU in a howl of frustration at the political elite. Pictured, ballot papers are counted
Sensitive subjects that worried households were barely acknowledged by the political class, his analysis claimed.
Although he did not name specific issues, Mr Cowling would almost certainly have in mind mass immigration – routinely among the biggest fears of voters – and the way foreign arrivals have changed communities in the UK.
For decades, politicians and the BBC have been accused of censoring debate, branding as ‘racist’ those who voiced concerns about the perceived erosion of our national identity or the pressure on jobs, housing, schools and healthcare. Fury at being overlooked for so long has led to vast numbers of Britons – many casting a ballot for the first time – to vote to quit the EU in a howl of frustration at the political elite.
Mr Cowling, a former special adviser to a Labour Cabinet minister in the 1970s, made the withering assessment in an internal memo that was leaked on the internet.
His words are damning because the BBC’s political research unit provides extensive background briefings for journalists and programme-makers.
But his findings appear to have been dismissed amid fears at the Corporation that it may be perceived as a Right-wing political agenda.
Mr Cowling, who is now a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London, wrote: ‘It seems to me that the London bubble has to burst if there is to be any prospect of addressing the issues that have brought us to our current situation.
‘There are many millions of people in the UK who do not enthuse about diversity and do not embrace metropolitan values yet do not consider themselves lesser human beings for all that. Until their values and opinions are acknowledged and respected, rather than ignored and despised, our present discord will persist.
‘Because these discontents run very wide and very deep and the metropolitan political class, confronted by them, seems completely bewildered and at a loss about how to respond (‘who are these ghastly people and where do they come from?’ doesn’t really hack it).
‘The 2016 EU referendum has witnessed the cashing in of some very bitter bankable grudges but I believe that, throughout this 2016 campaign, Europe has been the shadow not the substance.’
Despite Mr Cowling’s stinging evaluation, the BBC has been widely seen to have run an even-handed referendum campaign – setting aside what many see as a liberal bias.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, a leading Vote Leave supporter, said: ‘This analysis is right and refreshing. The political parties and the BBC do not appreciate the legitimate concerns of a large proportion of the population.
‘The size of the leave vote will be a demonstration of the size of people’s frustrations. A huge swathe of the population feel that their views are irrelevant to the metropolitan elite and the European elite.
‘The Establishment is out of touch with a huge proportion of our population.’
Mr Cowling, a specialist on political opinion polling, is a former editor of the BBC’s political research unit, which runs a small team of researchers. He now works for the corporation as a freelancer on an ‘ad hoc’ basis.
He has helped in the commissioning of polls by the BBC in all forms of elections, including at local, parliamentary and European level. Between 1977 and 1979 he was a special adviser to Environment Secretary Peter Shore in James Callaghan’s Labour Government.
His words echo those of the BBC’s former director-general Mark Thompson who in 2011 admitted there had been ‘some years’ when the broadcaster was ‘very reticent about talking about immigration’.
Mr Thompson said such ‘taboo’ subjects were avoided by the BBC. He added: ‘There was an anxiety about whether or not you might be playing into a political agenda if you did items on immigration.’
A BBC spokesman said: ‘This was an internal memo intended to help programme-makers create thought-provoking and broad-ranging impartial coverage.
‘It would wrong to read any more into this analysis than that.’