Chaos theory

Picture: Jessica Taylor/Twitter/@Jess__Taylor__

I would normally run a country mile to stay out of politics, but having been confined to a hospital bed for the last 19 days, with only Sky News and reruns of Minder to occupy the mind, it’s been hard not to be absorbed by the maelstrom consuming Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. His defensive line, and that of the ministerial stooges sent out to bat for him, has been that the rows over how the Downing Street flat redecoration was paid for, whether or not he'd allegedly said “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” to avoid another lockdown, the Dyson text affair and even the Greensill lobbying scandal, are all of little national consequence. Johnson and his acolytes, whenever pressed, have pushed the message that outside the Westminster bubble none of this political ‘rough and tumble’ counts, and that most people are more interested in their COVID jabs and getting a holiday abroad this year.

Westminster is, I’d agree, invariably an introspective pit of self-absorbtion. One of the most bizarre aspects of the government response to the pandemic has been the Downing Street press conferences, wherein Boris or the minister-du-jour gives a scripted speech, hands over to the experts for slides, then invites a couple of pre-recorded questions from Joe Public before facing scrutiny from the working media. Those with a mistrust of journalists have objected to the provocative questioning from heavyweight, if divisive, politicos like the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg or Sky’s Beth Rigby, regarding them as irrelevant when pitched after enquiries from regular folk about when they’ll be able to hug Granny again. But as self-serving as the media scrutiny can be, the chaos currently surrounding Boris underlines the fundamental importance of being able to hold politicians to account.

When you take a step back from the micro dramas swirling around Johnson, a picture emerges of a character whose leadership appears pinned to charisma alone, rather than any discernible management skill. For as long as he's been in public office, his blathering, Eton-educated P.G.Wodehouse persona depicted in his hapless guest hosting experience of Have I Got News For You? has projected a form of eccentricity that has masked whatever strength he might actually bring to the party. Moreover, it has certainly exposed his myriad weaknesses. But something got him into power; something has appealed to voters, repeatedly, to get him elected, first as an MP, then mayor of London, and latterly prime minister. Even factoring in the Brexit pledge that was central to his 2019 general election victory, you have to conclude that the public is either enamoured by Johnson’s appeal or brazenly immune to his deficiencies.

Picture: Jessica Taylor/Twitter/@Jess_Taylor_

Read any profile of Boris and the image of a bumbling but slightly endearing prat has been his perennial schtick. I encountered him myself in Copenhagen a few years ago when I was attending the COP17 climate change conference, and he was there as London mayor. Unlike the pomp and ceremony that accompanied Barrack Obama (who flew in on Air Force One with the usual presidential entourage and city-wide security lockdown), or even Prince Charles, who turned up with a vast supporting army including his own film crew, I ran into Boris shuffling about on his own, anorak and copious backpack making him look more like a misplaced tourist at Kings Cross station. There are stories aplenty of his financial woes and frugality, though this seems more about disorganisation rather than any fundamental regard for economy. As editor of The Spectator, Johnson reportedly asked interns to fetch him vending machine coffees without paying for them. Another story, concerning a dinner for former Daily Telegraph editor Bill Deedes, saw Boris allegedly welch on the £40 everyone had been asked to cough up to cover the bill. Such fiscal absent mindedness is matched by the dysfunction in Johnson’s private life, what with claims of serial womanising - inside and outside of marriage - and questions about how many children he has actually fathered. Again, this can be regarded as tittle-tattle, irrelevant to professional performance, but without taking a moralising tone, you start to accumulate a picture of someone singularly incapable of running a bath, let alone the country.

Hypothetically, transplant Boris out of public life and into the private sector: if he was the CEO of a quoted company it would be hard to imagine any board of directors having much stomach for the drip-drip-drip of reputation-damaging antics. Some CEOs sort of get away with apparent zaniness - Richard Branson and Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary spring instantly to mind - but while the photo ops might be good for PR, reputation matters. Attritional reputational damage can, over time, erode a brand, impacting both investor and consumer sentiment (viz. G. Ratner). I’ve worked professionally in this area a long time, and have been embroiled in various exercises in damage-limitation, though thankfully, nothing along the same lines that 10 Downing Street and Conservative Central Office will be enduring right now. My experience has been mostly confined to addressing media speculation about M&A gossip and the occasional executive slip-up. If done right, corporate communications functions are well prepared. Own goals can mostly be avoided, even if that means putting up executives who have been media trained to within an inch of their lives. Authenticity does count, as does honesty. In a crisis the advice is always to get your arms around the problem quickly, and to communicate 'little and often'. That does not seem to be the approach being applied by Boris. The chaos that has, for as long as he’s been in the public eye, surrounded him like the dust cloud around Pig-Pen in the Peanuts cartoons, has been allowed to develop. Perhaps deliberately, as if to project some sort of flawed genius, but we’re now at a point where all these streams of dysfunction are meeting at the same delta. We’ve gone from ‘wacky Boris’, dangling from a zipwire in a publicity stunt for the 2012 Olympics, to own goals that seriously question his integrity, and which are not being resolved by obfuscation and the defensive line that no-one outside Westminster cares about it all.

Richard Nixon was ultimately undone by Watergate. The very real prospect of Boris being undone by the relative triviality of new wallpaper is ridiculous. It is now being seen, on top of the ‘bodies’ story and the Greensill claims, as being the worst of his offences and, now the Electoral Commission has stepped in, even raising the prospect of criminal charges if it is found that Johnson has breached rules of disclosure. No one can deny a prime minister the right to customise their home above the shop (and everyone entering the office gets a £30,000 grant to do so), but without knowing who commissioned what, to be undone by claims of “illegal” donations for having the flat tarted up is farcical self-injury. But, then, it does fit in to another pattern of behaviour - Boris’s love of vanity projects. As London mayor he spaffed millions on the failed ‘garden bridge’ project and plans for the ‘Boris Island’ airport in the Thames Estuary. As prime minister, he’s spent £2.5 million on a new press conference suite in Downing Street in the middle of the COVID-induced financial crisis, while there are strong rumours that he wants to commission a replacement for the royal yacht Britannia as a platform for driving international trade. Then there was the expensive repainting of one of the RAF’s Voyager tanker-cum-transport aircraft so that it flies the flag, Air Force One-style, when shipping VIPs abroad (meaning that when the plane is on military refuelling duties, it’s bright white colour scheme with red-white-and-blue tail fin is in stark contrast to the standard grey paint for the RAF’s combat aircraft). All PR stunts, to some extent.

Picture: Jessica Taylor/Twitter/@Jess_Taylor_

Are all these items erroneous? Not necessarily, but they still point to a Boris Johnson more concerned with trivialities than more important matters of state. And the fact that some of them harm or at least bruise his reputation goes hand in hand with other weaknesses in his leadership, not the least of which being the assembly of a Cabinet populated by lightweights like Priti Patel, Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps and Liz Truss, plus the walking anachronism that is Jacob Rees-Mogg. All were seemingly appointed in reward for their Brexit loyalty rather than any notable administrative quality. And, then, there was the appointment and staunch endorsement of Dominic Cummings, even through the Barnard Castle debacle seriously undermined Johnson’s own “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives” slogan.

Again, to make the corporate analogy, there’s not a company in the world that could endure such constant aggravation, even in the most unexpected of business crises. Shit happens in any life, private or public, but character and leadership are the most important aspects of ensuring your stakeholders are on board with you. Perhaps Boris likes to see himself as a maverick (along with the much-discussed notion that he is Winston Churchill-incarnate). Perhaps he is a maverick. There is sometimes a borderline between these states of being. You can never tell whether a Liam Gallagher or John Lydon are deliberately awkward, revelling saying “Boo!” (or worse) aggressively, or whether it’s a just a confected image. You could ask the same of Boris: is the dishevelled hair and the hopeless bobble hat-and-shorts jogging combo concocted to endear himself, or is that just a what-you-see-is-what-you-get statement? Maybe. But like it or not, image does count. And the hair and saggy suits merely add to the apparent cavalier attitude Boris consistently applies across most other aspects of his life. 

Little of this is, to my knowledge or, for that matter, anyone else’s, of real consequence. No one - even Her Majesty’s Opposition - believes that Boris is a bad person per se. Even if the Electoral Commission finds that offences have been committed over the Lulu Lytle wallpaper, it’s hardly worthy of carting him off to Belmarsh. But add it all up - the petty misdemeanours, gaffes, dysfunction, chaos and, yes, a propensity for dishonesty - and you have to objectively question whether Boris Johnson is fit to serve. He might be a colourful figurehead, but he's also governing the world’s fifth largest economy, a G7 member and one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. If he can’t organise the redecoration of his grace-and-favour flat within the correct transparency protocols, how is he expected to have his finger on the nuclear button? I’ll just leave that there.

My favourite aunt

I owe a great deal to the BBC. My late father worked there for 35 years (that's him, behind the camera). I was brought up in a BBC household, rarely ever watching ITV (remember, kids, there was a time when there were just three - THREE! - channels...) appreciating what the corporation provided the nation and even the world, via its television and radio output. There was also its authority. It’s journalism was beyond question, its presenters peerless. And, best of all, you could watch a film at Christmas without interruption from adverts. As a child, I was able to visit Television Centre often, thanks to my dad. I’ve sat ‘in’ Daleks, been on the Blue Peter set, met the legend that was Brian Cant and still is Johnny Ball, Crackerjack presenters and Roy Castle, and was able to get precious tickets to be in the studio audience of Top Of The Pops. OK, all that was privilege, but they still emboldened my appreciation for the institution that is the BBC.

So, I’m naturally biased towards Auntie. However, within that very nickname lies the reason it, today, comes under attack from every direction like never before. Just look at the last six weeks: politicians from both sides have accused the BBC of editorial bias towards one side or another and, now Boris has landslid into No.10, the murmurings and mutterings have begun again about the sanctity of the TV licence fee, which funds everything from the Beeb’s television output to five of the UK’s 13 symphony orchestras. Paying for a licence is therefore considered to be a contribution to the national cultural fabric.

The inescapable truth, however, is whether this is still relevant. The days when the ever-cheerful Christmas Day episode of EastEnders drew audience figures of more than 20 million - somewhere close to a third of the population - are long gone. Ditto big-budget dramas and variety shows. Even a big draw like the Strictly Come Dancing final this year lost a million viewers from 2018. Thishas nothing to do with the quality of the BBC’s output (as the profoundly anti-Beeb Daily Mail would have you believe) but, simply, the continuing drain on so-called “terrestrial” audiences (an anachronistic phrase given the availability of most terrestrial programming on catch-up services) from other places. Kids, in particular, are just as likely to be consuming television in bite-sized chunks from YouTube, mainlining Jack Whitehall box sets on Netflix, or glued to TikTok*. And with that particular service commissioning ever more ambitious series and co-investing in semi-theatrical films like The Irishman, plus the inroads made by Amazon Prime to original programming of its own, the television landscape has shifted further than I think many people with a traditional view of it realise.
*A teenager reliably informs me

30 years ago I was involved in the last great revolution in British broadcasting, the launch of Sky TV. Then, on 5th February 1989, five new TV channels were added to that landscape on a single day, just seven years after the UK had gone from three to four. Today there are around 460. Something - quite a lot, actually - has to give: if you’re watching Lisa Snowdon’s Jewellery Collection on QVC you won’t be watching Pointless on BBC1. And yet you still need to have a TV licence to watch La Snowdon flogging her sparkly wares. No wonder there have long been Tory murmurings about the licence fee (most recently, the idea of decriminalising non-payment, a thin end of the wedge), but while inevitably some of that will be down to vindictive intent, some will also be the result of free market thinking. The topic of the BBC’s funding comes up periodically, and it is always regarded by noted beard scratchers as an “existential threat”. But with the return of a weaponised Conservative government, empowered like never before and driven by belligerent strategists like Dominic Cummings, that threat is actually, now, looking very real.

Picture: BBC

The argument over the TV licence’s relevance in an age of streamed entertainment is a strong one. I’m relatively happy at paying for one, and between Sir David Attenborough documentaries, Countryfile, Mock The Week, Gavin & Stacey, Rick Stein’s foodie travelogues, Radio 5 Live and my mate Gary Crowley’s shows on Radio London (plus of course, much, much, more), I couldn’t be any happier at effectively paying a subscription fee to the BBC. Given one option in the future, with a licence fee replaced by a pic’n’mix model, I would continue to pay for BBC programming, such is the quality of its output. But with the arrival of Netflix as a producer, not just a rebroadcaster, and Sky planning to invest millions in new original productions at its forthcoming new studio complex in Elstree, programming choice to dilute BBC viewing figures is only going to increase.

Daring to mention the general election just gone, those with an agenda against the BBC have been gifted a fresh grinding wheel for their bilious axes. The accusation of editorial bias is one that I’ll defend any broadcaster from. Generally the rule is that if both left and right are accusing you of political bias, you’re getting it right. The online and even institutional bullying that broadcasters like the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg and Sky’s Kay Burley received during the election campaign was at times beyond toxic. The far left accused Kuenssberg of being a shill for the Tories, and I’d accept that her comment about postal votes looking “grim” for Labour in a live report was ill-advised. Interestingly, though, both Labour and the Conservatives have had a pop at the BBC’s election coverage, something robustly defended by election night anchor Huw Edwards in a LinkedIn blog post: “You are expected to deliver a results programme which upholds the BBC's reputation for quality and fairness,” he wrote, “but you're doing so in a world where toxic cynicism and accusations of bias (from all sides) are adding to the pressures on the entire team. And you realise yet again that the real purpose of many of the attacks is to undermine trust in institutions which have been sources of stability over many decades. The apparent purpose, in short, is to cause chaos and confusion.”

Edwards pointed out, validly, that unlike journalists working for certain newspaper and website proprietors (“where regulation is risibly weak and blatant propaganda can be passed off as 'news’”), broadcast journalists are obliged to adhere to strict laws on impartiality. Political interests might not always like that - such as the Tories’ petulant complaint to Ofcom over Channel 4 replacing the absent Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage with melting ice statues during a televised leaders’ debate on climate change - but on balance, the BBC in particular gets it right. Occasionally, it will get it wrong, or appear to do so, such as Kuenssberg’s gaffe and that by political correspondent Alex Forsyth, who referred to Boris Johnson winning “the majority that he so deserves” during a live broadcast. This prompted shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald to say the BBC was partly to blame for Labour’s defeat last Thursday. “I’m very worried about our public service broadcaster,” he told the Today programme on Radio 4. “I’m really worried about the drift. You’ve seen the catalogue of criticisms that [Labour is] making,” adding, “if the BBC are going to hold themselves out as somehow having conducted themselves in an impartial manner, I think they’ve really got to have a look in the mirror. We’ve got a lot to say about this.”

Labour, of course, have other things to consider when it comes to their “period of reflection” on the election defeat and, frankly, the BBC should be the least of their considerations. The Conservatives, too, should lay off the BBC. Their victory had nothing to do with the BBC and, in what was most certainly a clear strategy, in spite of the BBC. I’m as uncomfortable with Boris Johnson evading scrutiny as anyone else, but swerving Andrew Neil in favour of doing selfies with Phil and Holly on This Morning was as belligerent a dismissal of the BBC as Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “disappearance” from the election campaign was a deliberate policy. Time will tell whether Johnson’s media performances in the election will come back to haunt him (hiding in a fridge to avoid an ITV reporter is not a good look, and despite his permanent ‘bumbling oaf’ comedy persona - honed on Have I Got News For You - he is as terrible a communicator as his predecessor, Theresa May). The Fourth Estate exists for a reason. The trick is how you engage it. Refusing it is counter-productive.

Picture courtesy of Huw Edwards/LinkedIn/Jeff Overs, BBC

At the weekend Lord Grade - Michael Grade, the former BBC chairman and scion of one of British entertainment’s most influential families - wrote that Neil’s rant-to-camera, goading Boris to come on his leaders' interview show, was petulant. “The situation appears to be bordering on open warfare – in which case I’d advise all concerned to take a step back and remember that it’s normal for governments and independent broadcasters to be at loggerheads.” Grade, writing in the Mail On Sunday, reminded readers that government enmity towards the BBC is nothing new, citing Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell “declaring war” on it over the ‘dodgy dossier’ row, and Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to appoint sympathetic governors to the BBC’s board following alleged negativity towards her over the Falklands War and the miners’ strike. During this election, however, Grade said that the BBC got things wrong. “I’m a huge fan of Mr Neil’s intellectually rigorous style,” he wrote, “and have been for 40 years, ever since I oversaw his selection as an unknown presenter on a London Weekend Television current affairs show. I am not a fan, however, of the way journalists such as Neil hijacked the airwaves, using humiliation tactics in a bid to force the Prime Minister to face their questions. This was a serious abuse of one’s position, and I have written to Ofcom requesting an urgent review to ensure it does not happen again.”

“The issue here is impartiality, and broadcasters have a statutory duty to respect that,” Grade continued. “It is not their job to use the airwaves to cajole and try to coerce politicians into interviews – or to shame them publicly if they exercise their right to refuse. British viewers do not want to see blatantly biased political reporting on mainstream television such as the Americans get with the Right-wing Fox News. But I fear that’s the way we are going.”

Senior Tories are now said to be staying away from Radio 4’s Today, too, ironically now that John Humphrys, and his uncompromising approach to interviewing, has retired. Nick Robinson, one of Today’s presenters, was even president of the Oxford University Conservative Association while a student. But he is still one of the most capable of political interviewers. Avoiding him is not the answer. If I had one criticism of the Tory election campaign (and I’m not going to get into lies and deceit here), it was the flimsy nature of some of the people they put up for broadcast interviews. With Rees-Mogg benched after five minutes of play over his awful Grenfell Tower remarks, the likes of Nicky Morgan and Matt Hancock were deployed, both lightweights. In fact, on one day of media campaigning, Morgan had to be augmented by Hancock. Where were the heavyweights, like Michael Gove and Sajid Javid? (I’d include Dominic Raab here, but he, too, was clearly - and correctly - judged to be too cold and toxic an Alan B’Stard to go anywhere near any broadcast outlet of influence).

But back to the BBC’s future: Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, has said that the BBC’s funding model is something the government “should look at”, targeting the iPlayer service as one particular area of focus. He has also said there would be wider consideration of licence fee when the BBC’s current Royal Charter ends in December 2027. “The media industry is changing,” Sunak has said. “How people consume media is changing and it’s of course right that we continue to look at those things over time.” For once, I agree with someone from this government, up to a point. That point is where a government - any government - adopts frankly dystopian tones about the BBC. Funding is one thing, but censoring by stealth is something else entirely.

In another piece for the Daily Mail, John Humphrys has also weighed in on the darkening skies gathering over the BBC. “Much more worrying are the threats emanating from Number 10,” he wrote pointing out - as Grade did - that Downing Street leaning on the media is nothing new. “I can't think of a single prime minister in the past half century who would not, at some point in their career, have despatched the BBC director-general to Devil's Island if they'd thought they could get away with it.” But, he ended, senior BBC executives come and go, but the corporation “tends to sail on regardless. When Mr. Johnson raises the question of the licence fee, though, we are entering infinitely more dangerous waters. Make no mistake, this is an existential threat to the BBC.”

In the short term, it is something that the ‘temporary’ Minister for Culture, Digital & Sport, the newly ennobled Nicky Morgan, will no doubt be looking at as she arrives back at the desk she vacated to stand down as an MP at the election. Some on the left will regard any threat to the BBC from this government as karma for the supposed bias during the campaign. But politics aside, by 2027 when the BBC’s charter is renewed, the media landscape will have changed even further. 5G, for example, will have arrived (and even, according to the wonks at my old employer Nokia, 6G), transforming how and, notably, where media is consumed ubiquitously. Even with the BBC’s embrace of online technology, it is still largely a construct of the broadcast industry it invented almost 100 years ago. It is still, though, whether hawks like it or not, a national institution like few others, save for perhaps the Royal Family. It’s motto “nation shall speak peace unto nation”, adopted on 1 January 1927 by the newly formed Corporation to signify its purpose, was a latent symbol of a decaying empire, an empire that itself would come under existential threat 12 years later and the outbreak of war. The BBC’s purpose has clearly shifted since then, and even if people who dress up in red, white and blue to wave flags at royal weddings still see the BBC as a projection of Britain and British values, that function has long since ceased to be relevant. At the end of the day, we should just want Auntie to keep producing the best of British television and radio. We just need to figure out how to pay for it, first.