Corbyn has revealed terrifying ambitions
The Labour leader poses as a liberator, but he is merely in the business of acquiring power
Nye Bevan famously declared that the purpose of acquiring power is to give it away, but Jeremy Corbyn is of a different persuasion. To him, the purpose of winning power is to then acquire a lot more of it. Power over the railways, which he’d nationalise. Power over the water, electricity and gas companies, which he’d either take over or regulate within an inch of their lives. And yesterday, he unveiled his latest plan: power over the media.
Not so long ago, Mr Corbyn posed as a great avenger who would punish newspapers for various misdeeds and released videos warning them that “change is coming”. He has now changed his tack, posing as a liberator who has come to save newspapers from the threats apparently posed by Facebook and Google. Then he’d free the BBC from the grasp of the government. Then apply “big, bold, radical thinking” to produce more of the journalism of which he approves. So he’d “put the public in control” using methods that sound an awful lot like putting politicians in control.
Many of Corbyn’s policies can be dismissed as fanciful but yesterday’s plan, laid out in some detail in a lecture in Edinburgh, is worth taking quite seriously. Just ideas, he said. But they are ideas that show the extent of Corbyn’s ambition, and give more clues about how he would intend to govern.
The BBC took up most of the lecture, which is understandable given its power. It’s not clear what would be achieved by forcing its staff to declare their social class, or how they’d define it, but none of that really matters. Its purpose – along with having the pointless BBC board elected by the public – would be to harass the corporation, and let them know who’s boss. Rather than being “freed of government control”, as he said yesterday, it would establish a regime of such control: the BBC would be reshaped to a politician’s liking.
And if its output is still not to his taste after his changes, not to worry: we will also be able to look forward to his “British Digital Corporation”, which would be set up alongside the BBC. There is plenty more: an increase in government-mandated “local democracy reporters”, whose remit would presumably be set by a Corbynite commissar. Then money for “investigative journalism” but, one suspects, going after politically approved targets. Newspapers might be somehow required to let journalists elect the editor – which would, of course, allow the government to decide how newspapers are run.
The press is in enough difficulty, which is why Corbyn feels emboldened. For all his talk about the power of newspapers, the BBC is the behemoth. At Ofcom’s last count, 62 per cent of the public get news from BBC One, 26 per cent from the BBC News Channel, 23 per cent from the BBC’S website and apps, 14 per cent from BBC Two – and on it goes. No newspaper can claim such figures. The BBC’S power is extraordinary, with its newsgathering teams reporting into a single director-general, who depends on the government for his financing. Corbyn doesn’t even need to nationalise it.
Tom Watson, Corbyn’s deputy, has long dreamt of being an Information Commissar. He is still trying to find enough Tory rebels to force newspapers under the regime of Impress, a would-be press regulator bankrolled by his patron, Max Mosley. This is a hangover from the Leveson Inquiry and, late on in that process, Watson realised that he was missing a trick: blame the internet giants for sucking advertising revenue from newspapers, and offer help. So we now have the new language: wicked tech giants, extracting wealth from “shared digital space” (which these tech firms, of course, did much to create). Rather than state control, we have a new cause: public-interest (ie, government approved) journalism.
This is easier because newspapers generally loathe the tech giants and politicians are terrified by them, so they’re rather friendless. They’re not seen as publishers who deserve any kind of free-speech protection. Their general behaviour, alas, makes them quite easy targets: aloof, staggeringly wealthy and having huge control over what people read. In Britain, and in America, it has changed the whole debate.
Hence Corbyn’s plan to launch a tax raid on Google and Facebook, with the loot used to reshape the media in a way more to his liking. Where might this end? What about the book publishing industry, which is facing similar challenges from tech giants: might it be “saved” by Corbynites proposing new rules and more state-sponsored – sorry, “public interest” – books?
Corbyn yesterday said how much he enjoys the election period, where broadcasters face tighter government rules on political balance. His hint was that he might make this the norm. Even to dangle these rules as a threat establishes a basic principle: after all these centuries of press freedom, newspapers are now part of the government’s train set.
This would mean an era where politicians are more likely to pick up the phone to editors and complain about journalists they find troublesome (as Watson once did to me) on the grounds that their behaviour (usually the asking of questions) falls short of “ethical standards”.
A politician’s definition of good journalism, and that of an editor, will never align. Nor should they. The relationship is like that between poacher and gamekeeper or, as HL Mencken once put it, dog and lamppost. This is precisely what the Corbynites want to end. It has never made sense to them why, if the media is so important, it is not answerable to the government.
In the scheme of things, Corbyn’s media overhaul might be quite small beer. He’s planning some £180 billion worth of renationalisations, a borrowing binge to pay for it, landlords subjected to rent controls (in spite of rents having been flat for years), a “fundamental rethink” of financial services. And now, the erosion of the boundary between the government and the press. “The mission of socialism in the 21st century,” he said yesterday, “is to lead profound change.” Let no one say that he doesn’t mean it.