[Opinion] BBC opening of parliament. Tories still seem able to lie and distort.
[Opinion] BBC opening of parliament. Tories still seem able to lie and distort.
Was watching the kings' speech on BBC. While the interviewed members of the 3 leading parties.
Amazing that the Tory member can make claims with no challenge. Specifically.
We will ensure labour stick to their promise not to raise taxes. (paraphrased)
They have claimed this throughout the election. Without labour or the media questioning it.
The actual promise.
Labour will not increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. (cut and paste from labour.org.uk)
This is not a promise to not raise taxes. It is about very specific taxes that generally affect the poorest more. Corp taxes capital gains etc are still free. But It seems intentional that Tories choose to ignore that.
Also, intentional that labour do not choose to publicly disagree.
Some claim about the nationalisation of rail costing a fortune.
While he included GB energy and others that do have some cost. He very openly attacked rail as the main cost.
This really needs challenging. Since privatisation, the government has spent way more inflation adjusted running the pseudo privatised gift to the shareholders. Then national rail ever cost. Nothing has improved since rail was privatised. (honestly safety has but due to modern standards not privatisation).
Nothing labour has promised is a cost sink. Yes, as company contracts end, the gov will need to take over running costs. But as we are already funding huge chunks of that cost now. The argument that nationalisation of rail is expensive is crap.
The more honest analysis is the Labour Party has little in the way of plans to fund needed improvements.
As much as I hate to admit, it's not going to happen.
The only reason to have the BBC is so that capital interests do not take over all UK media. And it really seems like the BBC no longer has that mantel.
Yes, the Tories worked hard to do this over the last 14 years, and the number of folks deciding the licence is no longer worth it. While hard to blame them, def has not helped.
But I can't help but wonder how we replace it. In 2024 how do we go about creating some form of a real news and current affairs channel that is free from commercial interests. Free from bias is going to be harder. Free from perceived bias impossible. Most consider the truth to have bias if it disagrees with their objective view.
Until the BBC has a new appointed head change will be slow. They have a lot of bad practices to get rid of that have become institutionalised from the top down over the last decade and a half.
We will ensure labour stick to their promise not to raise taxes. (paraphrased)
Labour will not increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. (cut and paste from labour.org.uk)
It is insane to me that you expect that a) a Tory spokesperson, speaking colloquially, should have to literally word-for-word quote the Labour manifesto every time they talk about Labour's policies, b) you think that from the perspective of the average voter the quotes aren't pretty similar anyway, and c) the BBC should be wasting its and our time obsessing over things like this in an off-the-cuff quote instead of focusing on substance.
Both of those claims you highlighted by Tory MPs are just standard political spin as opposed to some insane bald-faced lie. The reason the BBC didn't pick them up on it is because they are expecting the MPs to parrot talking points like that and any party politician would do something similar when being interviewed.
From what I remember Kier said something along the lines of not raising "your" taxes while campaigning which could be interpreted as including more than the three that they namecheck in the manifesto as being excluded. That was also a talking point which had spin on it (admittedly the Tory examples are cheekier).
Overall, I disagree with the assessment that the BBC are specifically letting us down here. The problem is politicians who are overly media trained to spout soundbites as opposed to engaging with political debate on a deeper level than surface rhetoric. In my opinion the main problem is that the public have extremely short attention spans which means that soundbites become viable/desirable over a detailed/serious answer.