The BBC was quite triumphant on Friday morning about the extent to which London had resisted the demonic Ukip thrall.By Janet Daley
This could be attributed, it was quite sure, to the fact that London’s population was “educated”: sophisticated, cultured professionals who were not going to be swept up in a tide of ignorant, backward… whoops. No, we’ll leave the second half of that observation unsaid (but you know what we mean, right?) For a moment, we got a glimpse of just what an intense rapport the BBC believes that it has with its core London following. Indeed, some BBC staff got so carried away with the excitement of the past week that they took to posting satirical anti-Ukip tweets, quite forgetting that in their capacity as public-service broadcasting journalists, they had a statutory duty to be impartial.
After one news channel editor, Jasmine Lawrence, was suspended from election coverage (but not from the Corporation) for a particularly aggressive characterisation of Ukip on Twitter as “white, middle-class, middle-aged men w(ith) sexist/racist views”, the head of the BBC newsroom, Mary Hockaday, sent an email to staff warning them about the dangers of social media. It said, “As a member of BBC staff – and especially as someone who works in News – there are particular considerations to bear in mind (which can) be summarised as: 'Don’t do anything stupid’ ”.
Notice that there was no particular surprise that Ms Lawrence, who had been scheduled to cover this major political event, made no pretence of neutrality when she expressed her opinions. Why should there be? Such views are commonplace received wisdom within the BBC: it would have been startling to discover that she
thought Ukip had a reasonable point to make. This was just a warning to be discreet, not an admonition to try to be genuinely fair-minded.
So, is London really BBC Land? Did it largely fail to respond to the Ukip message because its voters have been educated out of their vulgar prejudices and now think like BBC news editors? Or are they immune to Ukip’s appeal because they are richer and generally more confident about their own future security than most of their countrymen? Maybe the capital really is a haven of enlightened, progressive diversity, so unlike the benighted badlands of the provinces, because more of its residents have been to university and learnt to be civilised about foreigners.
Or perhaps it is just the case that relative wealth tends to make people less anxious about outsiders, and more socially amiable. Insecurity of any kind creates anxiety and fear induces resentment. Sitting comfortably in their gold-mine properties, employing their Eastern European domestic staff, reasonably confident that there will always be further employment opportunities, why should most Londoners worry? I am not being sarcastic. If you are prosperous and optimistic, you are less likely to be troubled by incomers: cultural and ethnic diversity adds value to your way of life rather than being a threat to it. There may be a lesson here for Left-wing wealth-haters. If you want a tolerant, cosmopolitan society, then you should encourage affluence not denounce it.
But even this does not entirely account for the enormous gulf between the capital and the rest of the country. London has come to represent a set of social preoccupations that is not confined to the area within the M25: it resides in a London-land of the mind. BBC carries London-land with it wherever it goes. Have you noticed any difference in the social or political assumptions that underpin its Salford-based programmes from the ones that emanate from W1A?
The Conservative campaign for gay marriage was a perfect example of a metropolitan issue that provoked huge resentment in the non-London country: not because a great tranche of the population was homophobic, but because this seemed like a trivial, even decadent, indulgence for Westminster politics to be so disproportionately obsessed with at a time of financial crisis. The fact that a majority of people did not oppose the policy in principle does not mean that they were not furious about the amount of time and effort that was given over to it: it is precisely the question of priorities that divides London-land from the rest of the nation.
For that crucial constituency of C1s and C2s who delivered three Tory election victories followed by three New Labour ones, there is now real fear for the future – of which resentment of immigration is just one aspect. Most central to their frustration is the sense that the direction of government is out of their control – because of the overweening EU, whose authority bears little resemblance to their conception of democracy, but also because a self-regarding, contemptuous Westminster political club has written off their anger as unworthy. Now they have found a new way to get their revenge, which even smug denizens of London-land will not be able to ignore.
Jasmine Lawrence (right), who wrote the tweet the day before the elections, has since deleted her account and the BBC has launched an investigation.
