Hilarious if they were not so dangerous

The good Dr North at EU Referendum draws our attention today to two related pieces in that newsprint spattered bastion of Marxism known as The Guardian.

It seems a left wing, self appointed band of self professed worthies has announced that they are launching a campaign to hold to account Britain’s ‘feral’ elite for the series of crises which have scarred the country.

Expenses, bonuses and hacking crises share the same origins, says this campaign group, which proposes to create a 1,000-strong “public jury” that would be selected at random and ensure that power is taken away from “remote interest groups” which currently treat the public with contempt.  As North explains:

This is the view the likes of Greg Dyke, Caroline Lucas and Lord Smith of Clifton, who think we need a “people’s jury” to apply a “public interest first” test more generally to British political and corporate life. Overworked as a cliché or not, you really could not make this one up.

And he’s right.  The ‘feral elite’ they describe is comprised of figures from the establishment.  Yet without any sense of self awareness or the evident rich irony, the campaign group itself is made up of 56 academics, writers, trade unionists and politicians from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party – in other words, left wing figures from the establishment.

A look at the list of signatories to their open letter in the Graun betrays the motivation and the objective of this little enterprise.  This is not about holding the ‘feral elite’ to account, it is about undermining their rivals in the establishment in order to secure more influence for themselves and their liberal-left worldview.  If you don’t believe that, just look at their stated priority areas for attention in the background article about the campaign:

• Media ownership and the public interest

• The role of the financial sector in the crash

• MP selections and accountability

• Policing and public interest

• How to apply a ‘public interest first’ test more generally to British political and corporate life

Quelle surprise seeing media ownership, code for ‘nail Murdoch and any opposition to the BBC and Guardian’ right up there at number one.  You can almost see the conversation where these people were asking themselves what could they do to capitalise on the current anti News Corp sentiment and solidify the dominance of the BBC on the airwaves.  This campaign is their vehicle to control the levers of power without having to share the cockpit any longer.

As if there are not enough clues as to the real aims of this campaign – oxygen of publicity by the Guardian… main figurehead the former BBC Director General Greg Dyke… supported by Media Standards Trust (deputy chair, Julia Middleton, the CEO of Common Purpose) board members Helena Kennedy QC, BBC hack Robert Peston and Amelia Fawcett who is also chair of Guardian Media Group…  – the activity is being facilitated by Compass.  Note their slogan.  The one thing absent from the campaign is any form of ideological balance.  That should tell us all we need to know.

This is nothing more than a raid.  It is an attempt to get support from unwitting people, who would reject the leftist dogma out of hand if presented to them openly, who feel concern at what they see around them.  But people who will fail to realise the state of affairs this campaign claims it wants to tackle has largely been shaped by its very signatories since 1997 because it suited their interersts in their establishment positions.

The campaign is nothing more an attempt to use people as pawns in the power games of the elite.  As North rightly concludes in his blog post:

The trouble is, you will never get the “feral elite” offer anything that amounts to the transfer of real power. If we want power, we are going to have to take it. The time is not yet, but what we are seeing here is the elites falling out. The time must be near.

That time cannot come too soon.