Post by Teddy Bear on Mar 22, 2012 17:59:05 GMT
An excellent article by Steven Glover that crosses the T's and dots the I's about what is going on in our society.
Leftie bishops, liberal judges, a biased BBC and how the gutless Tories lost control of our national institutions
By Stephen Glover
When Rowan Williams resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury last week I thought Dr John Sentamu, the traditionalist Archbishop of York, was favourite to succeed him. He may still have the shortest odds, but I am now far from convinced he will make it.
Unidentified senior ecclesiastical sources are putting the knife in. Sentamu lacks judgment, they claim. Bit of a wild card. It is suggested he has blotted his copybook by writing a column for the Sunday edition of The Sun. We need a safe pair of hands, say his detractors.
What they really mean, of course, is that Dr Sentamu is a social conservative, and therefore unacceptable to the liberals who constitute a majority in the upper echelons of the Church of England. They will do their utmost to have one of their own chosen as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
In the Anglican Church there is at least a strong socially conservative element. Not so at the BBC, where the search is on for a new director-general to succeed Mark Thompson. It is inconceivable that his replacement could be a social conservative, or indeed a conservative of any stripe.
The choice is between BBC apparatchiks: Caroline Thomson, Helen Boaden, George Entwistle and Tim Davie. I’m told Ms Boaden may lean fractionally more to the Right than the others, but none of them could be fairly described as conservative with a big or small ‘c’, and it is unimaginable that anyone of such a persuasion could become director-general of the BBC.
Mark Thompson himself admitted 18 months ago that the Corporation was guilty of a ‘massive’ Left-wing bias in the past, while contending it is now a broader church. I don’t see much evidence of that. Sceptics will say the BBC is so innately Left-of-centre that it wouldn’t make any difference if a full-blooded Tory were put in charge.
And before we run away with the idea that its quite recently installed chairman, Lord Patten, could be so described, let it be remembered that he was a leading ‘wet’ and anti-Thatcherite who resided on the far reaches of the liberal wing of the Tory Party, which was several degrees to the Left of what used to be called ‘Right-wing Labour’.
The truth is that it is very difficult for a conservative or Conservative to be appointed to lead any of our great national institutions. It has been thus since at least the dawn of New Labour in 1997. What is surprising is that it should continue to be so even after nearly two years of a supposedly Tory-led Government.
Of course, there are many institutional posts that are not within the gift of any government, and most of these continue to be taken up by people of the Left. One small but telling example is the rash of recent appointments of outsiders as heads of Oxbridge colleges. All come from the Left.
At Oxford, there is the former BBC executive Mark Damazer, economist Will Hutton and Labour peer Helena Kennedy. Magdalene College, Cambridge, will soon be presided over by the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who without apparent irony once described himself as a ‘hairy Lefty’.
My point is not that these people are unworthy of their new positions. It is simply that I cannot easily imagine luminaries of the Right — say the distinguished philosopher Roger Scruton, or the former newspaper editor Charles Moore — being chosen in significant numbers, if at all, for posts of this sort.
This shows that the culture wars of the past half century have been largely won by the Left, whose denizens increasingly dominate institutions beyond the reach of government patronage. These include the judiciary, by the way. According to rumours, a new judge being chosen for the European Court of Human Rights may be a Left-leaning QC called Ben Emmerson, who works with Cherie Blair in Matrix Chambers.
But if the Left has captured many institutional strongholds in which the Right once had a role, a Tory-led government is far from powerless, controlling as it does hundreds of important official appointments in quangos and other bodies. New Labour was adept at ruthlessly packing these with its own people.
The Coalition, by contrast, is much more tentative, and cheerfully tolerates many Left-of-centre figures who thrived in the Labour years. This indulgence is probably the consequence of undue Lib Dem influence, and of a kind of easygoing amateurishness at the top of the Tory Party.
Whatever the reason, a large number of Labour appointees continue to hold important public positions. There is Lord Smith (the former Labour cabinet minister, Chris Smith) who has been chairman of Advertising Standards Authority since 2007 and of the Environment Agency since 2008.
The ubiquitous academic Lisa Jardine has been chair of the Human Fertilisation And Embryology Authority since 2008, while that inveterate quangocrat Suzi Leather clings on as chair of the Charity Commission, having previously had Professor Jardine’s present job.
I could go on. There are innumerable examples of ‘progressive’ and Leftish types appointed to key positions by the last government who remain happily in post. They are not all bad people, and some of them may be doing a good job.
Nonetheless, the timidity of what, after all, is supposed to be a Tory-led Coalition, is both striking and depressing. Are Tories never to play a part in public life again? I do not want to get rid of all the Lefties in the way many of them would like to drop every Tory off Beachy Head. All I am asking for is fair representation.
At the last election, the Tories won 36 per cent of the vote. I’ve no doubt there are many who voted Labour and Lib Dem who would describe themselves as small ‘c’ conservatives. There is an enormous swathe of opinion not reflected in our institutions.
As I’ve said, there are many of these over which government has no sway, and in which the Left has prevailed after its long march. A Tory history don at Oxford told me the other day that in his estimation about 90 per cent of his colleagues in his department are of the Left. There isn’t a great deal the Government can do about that.
But it can redress the grotesque imbalance in its own backyard by removing some of the Leftist dinosaurs installed by New Labour, and appointing people who have the temerity to hold Right-wing views.
David Cameron did not have to appoint Lord Patten. He could have put a real Tory in charge of the BBC, which is by far the most powerful Leftist institution in Britain. Nor, in fact, does he have to accept the first name of two nominees for the Archbishopric of Canterbury if it is that of an off-the-shelf liberal with Dr Sentamu as the second nominee.
There are lots of ways in which ‘David Cameron’s Tories’ could turn the tide if only they had the guts and the gumption. If they think government is only about getting the deficit down, they are sadly misguided. The Left knows differently — which is why, even when it is not in government, it remains in power.
By Stephen Glover
When Rowan Williams resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury last week I thought Dr John Sentamu, the traditionalist Archbishop of York, was favourite to succeed him. He may still have the shortest odds, but I am now far from convinced he will make it.
Unidentified senior ecclesiastical sources are putting the knife in. Sentamu lacks judgment, they claim. Bit of a wild card. It is suggested he has blotted his copybook by writing a column for the Sunday edition of The Sun. We need a safe pair of hands, say his detractors.
What they really mean, of course, is that Dr Sentamu is a social conservative, and therefore unacceptable to the liberals who constitute a majority in the upper echelons of the Church of England. They will do their utmost to have one of their own chosen as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
In the Anglican Church there is at least a strong socially conservative element. Not so at the BBC, where the search is on for a new director-general to succeed Mark Thompson. It is inconceivable that his replacement could be a social conservative, or indeed a conservative of any stripe.
The choice is between BBC apparatchiks: Caroline Thomson, Helen Boaden, George Entwistle and Tim Davie. I’m told Ms Boaden may lean fractionally more to the Right than the others, but none of them could be fairly described as conservative with a big or small ‘c’, and it is unimaginable that anyone of such a persuasion could become director-general of the BBC.
Mark Thompson himself admitted 18 months ago that the Corporation was guilty of a ‘massive’ Left-wing bias in the past, while contending it is now a broader church. I don’t see much evidence of that. Sceptics will say the BBC is so innately Left-of-centre that it wouldn’t make any difference if a full-blooded Tory were put in charge.
And before we run away with the idea that its quite recently installed chairman, Lord Patten, could be so described, let it be remembered that he was a leading ‘wet’ and anti-Thatcherite who resided on the far reaches of the liberal wing of the Tory Party, which was several degrees to the Left of what used to be called ‘Right-wing Labour’.
The truth is that it is very difficult for a conservative or Conservative to be appointed to lead any of our great national institutions. It has been thus since at least the dawn of New Labour in 1997. What is surprising is that it should continue to be so even after nearly two years of a supposedly Tory-led Government.
Of course, there are many institutional posts that are not within the gift of any government, and most of these continue to be taken up by people of the Left. One small but telling example is the rash of recent appointments of outsiders as heads of Oxbridge colleges. All come from the Left.
At Oxford, there is the former BBC executive Mark Damazer, economist Will Hutton and Labour peer Helena Kennedy. Magdalene College, Cambridge, will soon be presided over by the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who without apparent irony once described himself as a ‘hairy Lefty’.
My point is not that these people are unworthy of their new positions. It is simply that I cannot easily imagine luminaries of the Right — say the distinguished philosopher Roger Scruton, or the former newspaper editor Charles Moore — being chosen in significant numbers, if at all, for posts of this sort.
This shows that the culture wars of the past half century have been largely won by the Left, whose denizens increasingly dominate institutions beyond the reach of government patronage. These include the judiciary, by the way. According to rumours, a new judge being chosen for the European Court of Human Rights may be a Left-leaning QC called Ben Emmerson, who works with Cherie Blair in Matrix Chambers.
But if the Left has captured many institutional strongholds in which the Right once had a role, a Tory-led government is far from powerless, controlling as it does hundreds of important official appointments in quangos and other bodies. New Labour was adept at ruthlessly packing these with its own people.
The Coalition, by contrast, is much more tentative, and cheerfully tolerates many Left-of-centre figures who thrived in the Labour years. This indulgence is probably the consequence of undue Lib Dem influence, and of a kind of easygoing amateurishness at the top of the Tory Party.
Whatever the reason, a large number of Labour appointees continue to hold important public positions. There is Lord Smith (the former Labour cabinet minister, Chris Smith) who has been chairman of Advertising Standards Authority since 2007 and of the Environment Agency since 2008.
The ubiquitous academic Lisa Jardine has been chair of the Human Fertilisation And Embryology Authority since 2008, while that inveterate quangocrat Suzi Leather clings on as chair of the Charity Commission, having previously had Professor Jardine’s present job.
I could go on. There are innumerable examples of ‘progressive’ and Leftish types appointed to key positions by the last government who remain happily in post. They are not all bad people, and some of them may be doing a good job.
Nonetheless, the timidity of what, after all, is supposed to be a Tory-led Coalition, is both striking and depressing. Are Tories never to play a part in public life again? I do not want to get rid of all the Lefties in the way many of them would like to drop every Tory off Beachy Head. All I am asking for is fair representation.
At the last election, the Tories won 36 per cent of the vote. I’ve no doubt there are many who voted Labour and Lib Dem who would describe themselves as small ‘c’ conservatives. There is an enormous swathe of opinion not reflected in our institutions.
As I’ve said, there are many of these over which government has no sway, and in which the Left has prevailed after its long march. A Tory history don at Oxford told me the other day that in his estimation about 90 per cent of his colleagues in his department are of the Left. There isn’t a great deal the Government can do about that.
But it can redress the grotesque imbalance in its own backyard by removing some of the Leftist dinosaurs installed by New Labour, and appointing people who have the temerity to hold Right-wing views.
David Cameron did not have to appoint Lord Patten. He could have put a real Tory in charge of the BBC, which is by far the most powerful Leftist institution in Britain. Nor, in fact, does he have to accept the first name of two nominees for the Archbishopric of Canterbury if it is that of an off-the-shelf liberal with Dr Sentamu as the second nominee.
There are lots of ways in which ‘David Cameron’s Tories’ could turn the tide if only they had the guts and the gumption. If they think government is only about getting the deficit down, they are sadly misguided. The Left knows differently — which is why, even when it is not in government, it remains in power.