Britain's Trumpist Tendency

Has the UK nursed our very own brood of budding Quislings?

Over recent weeks we have been treated to the depressing spectacle of US newspapers The LA Times and Washington Post pre-emptively bending the knee to disgraced former POTUS Donald Trump by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate in the upcoming US election. Truly shameful, and, if we needed it, confirmation that billionaires think of their own interests above all. The outrage and loss of subscriptions have come too late for a last-minute volte-face from Bezos and co, which would anyway be regarded as little value to anyone, coming after their submission to a wannabe dictator.

But in the UK, we are not immune from such spineless behaviour, hence the rush to placate Trump after his confected tantrum regarding Labour volunteers helping the Harris campaign. Realpolitik, on the part of Starmer and Lammy, but vomit-inducing, nonetheless. Trump only values slavish fealty, and even then, will discard supplicants when either no longer useful or suit his inflated ego. Witness the shunning of former rival Republican candidate, Nikki Haley, despite her pathetically needy offers to campaign for him.

The 'Trumpkinification' of the Tories

(Even) more disturbing is the lickspittle attitude of the usual suspects in the UK; the likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg, Badenoch, Johnson, Jenrick, GB News, Daily Mail, The Spectator (especially the abject toadying of deputy editor Freddy Gray), The Telegraph etc. This crowd appear more than happy to grovel to Trump whilst slagging off their own country - when they’re not in charge, although Badenoch, Truss et al let slip their opinion on what they regarded as the workshy, lazy nature of the British population often enough when in power.

Former PM Johnson gave a typically buffoonish, nation-shaming interview to Australian TV where he grovelled to Trump, saying of the January 6th, 2021, insurrection, “It’s not a unique phenomenon, in our country there was a referendum on the EU, and it went against the remain side. Would you say they meekly accepted the result? No!”

As if all the state visits and fawning to Trump by May and Johnson ever achieved anything, let alone a Brexit-saving US trade deal, the Holy Grail of the original Tory Leave cabal.

It Could Happen Here

So, it appears we have a potential cohort of Quislings ready to welcome Trump, as some in the UK would have gladly laid out the welcome mat for Hitler in 1940. We know that a fair percentage of right-leaning politicians, aristocrats, newspaper proprietors, and Big Business magnates would have not been averse to an authoritarian, Nazi Germany-allied UK. Especially the Duke of Windsor, who was hoping to get his old job back courtesy of Herr Hitler, whom he had lauded frequently in both public and private.

My particular concern would be the coverage the BBC accords Trump. We know that DG Tim Davie, board member Robbie Gibb (former editorial advisor for GB News, and an ‘active agent’ of the Tories, according to Emily Maitlis), ex-GB News Obergruppenführer John McAndrew, together with presenters Laura Kuenssberg and Fiona Bruce are all aligned with the right, obvious with the latter pair from their on-air behaviour fronting shows, where Conservatives are deferred to and socialists constantly interrupted.

And in Kuenssberg’s case, leaking interview notes to Boris Johnson, surely a sackable offence anywhere else but Auntie.

But if, God help us, Trump becomes president, how will the BBC handle his second term?

Here, we have a lesson from history, and not a particularly edifying one. In the words of Rod Serling when introducing The Twilight Zone, “Submitted for your approval, the BBC and the Nazis”.

In October 1933, Germany pulled out of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference; BBC reporter Vernon Bartlett stated in his coverage, "I believe the British would have acted in much the same way as Germany if they had been in the same position." Although this exercise in saying the quiet bit aloud earned Bartlett criticism in Parliament and the press, together with his resignation, this only meant the Corporation henceforward exercised slightly more subtlety in currying favour with the Nazis.

Again, to paraphrase Rod Serling, "Imagine if you will…a BBC run by the kind of man who admires both Mussolini and Hitler. That man is Director General John Reith.”

Reith’s BBC was a staunch and willing partisan of arch-appeaser PM Neville Chamberlain, so much so that Winston Churchill was unofficially ‘cancelled’ from appearing during Chamberlain's first two years in office. Churchill commented at the time: "If we could get access to the broadcast some progress could be made. All this is very carefully sewn up over here."

In her book My Father: Reith of the BBC (2008), his daughter Marista said he had been a supporter of Hitler from at least when he became Chancellor in January 1933. Reith went as far as to lecture Dr. Wanner, the head of broadcasting for southern Germany, who had severe misgivings about the new government, noting in his diary, “I am pretty certain, however, that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again. They are being ruthless and most determined."? Reith got on marvellously with German ambassador/later foreign minister (executed at Nuremberg) Joachim von Ribbentrop, asking him to let Hitler know "the BBC was not anti-Nazi", even offering to fly the swastika from the top of Broadcasting House if his Nazi counterpart ever turned up there.

Inform, Educate, Entertain…& Obey

Following the July 1934 Night of the Long Knives purge, Reith cheerfully chirruped in his diary "I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt. I really admire the drastic actions taken, which were obviously badly needed." Even after the now defenceless Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Nazis in 1939, he wrote: "Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency." Historian Asa Briggs was convinced Reith's "notions of social and industrial regimentation inclined towards fascism". This could also include antisemitism, as he made the observation that his wife Muriel’s relatives looked Jewish, in a way that implied criticism, confirming daughter Marista’s belief that, “in many ways, my father must be a rather terrible person."

Certainly, from photographs taken of 6ft 6inch, perma-scowling Reith, he appeared to be the sort of person one would happily cross the street to avoid, backed up by pronouncements such as “Germany has banned hot jazz and I'm sorry that we should be behind in dealing with this filthy product of modernity.”

Reith’s regime caused alarm amongst Labour MPs at the time; Hastings Lee-Smith (who) said in the Commons, "The BBC is an autocracy which has outgrown the original autocrat ... It has become despotism in decay ... the nearest thing in this country to Nazi government that can be shown... If I talk to any employee of the Corporation, I am made to feel like a conspirator."

Echoes of ‘Sir’ Robbie Gibb’s activities as ideological monitor at the BBC, where he continues to lead the so-called ‘impartiality drive’, essentially a tool to control reportage in favour of the right. Surely his days on the BBC Board are numbered, Lisa Nandy?

And he can take fellow travellers Davie, McAndrew, Kuenssberg and Bruce with him.

Rod Serling Was Prophetic With This Warning

Stephen Arnell 05/11/24