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<blockquote data-quote="Ffermer Bach" data-source="post: 7833335" data-attributes="member: 51054"><p><h3>After 11 years of Tory rule, Britain is still run by a hypocritical Blairite elite</h3><p>The quangos and BBC continue to be dominated by a soft-Left establishment that the PM is too scared to tame</p><p><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/s/sf-sj/sherelle-jacobs/" target="_blank">SHERELLE JACOBS</a>8 November 2021 • 9:30pm<img src="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Author%20photos/Sherelle%20Jacobs%20Aug%202021-small.png?imwidth=100" alt="Sherelle Jacobs" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Who really runs Britain? The Conservative Party might keep winning elections, and the prevailing narrative is that incompetent Tory Brexiteers are running the country into the gutter. But in the nation’s quangos and regulators, at the top of our universities and cultural institutions, in the BBC and the charity sector, there is barely a conservative to be found. After 11 years of Tory rule, a soft-Left Blairite elite remains firmly in control. It is both scandalous and impressive. Despite the ejection of new Labour, Brexit, and the landslide election of a Right-wing populist government, the balance of power rests firmly with the old guard. </p><p>The evidence is everywhere. It is seemingly business as usual at the BBC, where newly appointed chair Richard Sharp defends the broadcaster’s impartiality (he insists that Auntie’s Brexit coverage was “incredibly balanced”), as the evidence to the contrary mounts and the public’s anger grows. The UK’s top universities are becoming, if anything, even more confident in their virtue-signalling hypocrisy. While Oxford vows to “decolonise” degrees, it has emerged that two of its colleges have accepted millions of pounds in donations from the Mosley family, money inherited from the notorious fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Both of the colleges in question, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall, were at the time headed by paragons of the soft-Left elite, former BBC controller Mark Damazer and <em>Guardian </em>editor Alan Rusbridger.</p><p></p><p></p><p>ADVERTISING</p><p></p><p>The Tories have made little progress in reining in the “Blob”. Whitehall sinks every project that insults its sensibilities – most recently the Prime Minister’s gumptious hopes to make Britain the Qatar of hydrogen. And so much for the bonfire of the quangos; in fact, their spending has tripled under the Tories.</p><p>Though the Government likes to reassure its supporters that it knows these organisations are compromised by bias, it lacks the will to tackle the problem head on. Many Tories have long suspected that the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, has been treating Brexiteers unfairly, but the Prime Minister retreated from battle last week as soon as he realised that it would be politically controversial. </p><p>The Government has also failed to challenge the political appointments watchdog’s intervention in the recruitment process for top quango jobs. It was reported this week that the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments blocked Tory-endorsed interview panellists for the role of BBC chairman, as well board members for the British Film Institute and the Office for Students. This was justified on the basis that those put forward weren’t “independent”.</p><p>The problem is partly that the power of the soft Left establishment is even stickier than many Brexiteers imagined. It has rigged the system by elevating “process” to an almost spiritual status, while subjectively defining the qualities candidates need to succeed. </p><p>This includes the gold-standard ideal of “objectivity”, or “impartiality”. The meaning of these words has been reinvented for the post-modern era, from a commitment to logically revealed truth to a “balanced” positioning between extremities, which tends to mean a commitment to a socially liberal form of technocratic <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/07/21/conservative-party-must-now-reject-vacuous-centrism-rory-stewart/" target="_blank">“centrism”</a>. Equally, since Blair, the definition of “diversity” has been restricted to refer only to professional women and ethnic minorities, who conveniently tend towards a centre-Left worldview, rather than greater openness to the working-class or laymen. </p><p>Clearly, to overthrow such a regime, the Tories require an argument stronger than the need to politically “rebalance” the system. Such a weak justification leaves them open to charges of nepotism. Instead they should be exposing the lies and artifice that underpin the power of this elite, and opening public bodies to democratic oversight.</p><p>They have made some headway on a few fronts. Oliver Dowden’s move as culture secretary to set up a new board to discuss how heritage organisations can educate the public about their past, without succumbing to the anti-statue brigade – with members including Trevor Phillips, the former director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the historian Robert Tombs – was a cleverly balanced response to an issue that the liberal Left views through a hysterical lens. Although it was attacked by the woke industrial complex, the<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/meet-tony-sewell-man-took-race-clique/" target="_blank"> race report </a>the Government commissioned which found no evidence of structural racism in this country was subversively daring.</p><p>Yet elsewhere they have shown that they have little stomach for a real fight. While they are happy to lambast the BBC’s false claims of impartiality, their threatened “showdown” with the broadcaster amounts to little more than populist rhetoric. Meanwhile, Conservatives who have managed to penetrate the quangos are inevitably almost always a “moderate”, and usually a Remainer.</p><p>Most dispiritingly, the Government seems to think it has to work within the grain of the existing system, rather than unpick its very foundations. But it’s not good enough to replace one quango with another: as O’Sullivan’s law states, institutions that are not explicitly Right-wing will tend to become Left-wing over time. </p><p>They could, for example, be seeking to give citizens a greater stake in the system. The National Lottery Community Fund’s regional committees, which have randomly recruited people from the electoral register before vetting them for public service, could be an alternative model for deciding quango selection panels. Members of the public could even be chosen “by lot” for secondment stints in select public roles. Such a shift would have the added advantage of challenging the elite’s reverence for “specialisation” and “expertise”. It’s a nonsense that all public roles require “expert” professionals to hold them. </p><p>But the Tories cannot do nothing. The institutional resistance of public bodies to conservative policies will only get worse over time. Leaving these bodies in the hands of the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/28/fury-elite-remainers-making-increasingly-anti-british/" target="_blank">same old figures </a>also effectively overrules the democratic rejection of the elite old guard that Brexit embodied. The public will not put up indefinitely with being ruled by a professional elite that does not see the world like them.</p><p><img src="https://static.telegraph.co.uk/aem/martech/tgt-506-politics-headlines/politics_headline.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p>Politics Headlines</p><p>Your personal political briefing, delivered to your inbox every day</p><p>Sign up</p><p>Related Topics</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tony-blair/" target="_blank">Tony Blair, </a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/bbc/" target="_blank">BBC, </a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/boris-johnson/" target="_blank">Boris Johnson</a></li> </ul><p><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/08/11-years-tory-rule-britain-still-run-hypocritical-blairite-elite/#comment" target="_blank">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/08/11-years-tory-rule-britain-still-run-hypocritical-blairite-elite/#comment</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ffermer Bach, post: 7833335, member: 51054"] [HEADING=2]After 11 years of Tory rule, Britain is still run by a hypocritical Blairite elite[/HEADING] The quangos and BBC continue to be dominated by a soft-Left establishment that the PM is too scared to tame [URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/s/sf-sj/sherelle-jacobs/']SHERELLE JACOBS[/URL]8 November 2021 • 9:30pm[IMG alt="Sherelle Jacobs"]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Author%20photos/Sherelle%20Jacobs%20Aug%202021-small.png?imwidth=100[/IMG] Who really runs Britain? The Conservative Party might keep winning elections, and the prevailing narrative is that incompetent Tory Brexiteers are running the country into the gutter. But in the nation’s quangos and regulators, at the top of our universities and cultural institutions, in the BBC and the charity sector, there is barely a conservative to be found. After 11 years of Tory rule, a soft-Left Blairite elite remains firmly in control. It is both scandalous and impressive. Despite the ejection of new Labour, Brexit, and the landslide election of a Right-wing populist government, the balance of power rests firmly with the old guard. The evidence is everywhere. It is seemingly business as usual at the BBC, where newly appointed chair Richard Sharp defends the broadcaster’s impartiality (he insists that Auntie’s Brexit coverage was “incredibly balanced”), as the evidence to the contrary mounts and the public’s anger grows. The UK’s top universities are becoming, if anything, even more confident in their virtue-signalling hypocrisy. While Oxford vows to “decolonise” degrees, it has emerged that two of its colleges have accepted millions of pounds in donations from the Mosley family, money inherited from the notorious fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Both of the colleges in question, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall, were at the time headed by paragons of the soft-Left elite, former BBC controller Mark Damazer and [I]Guardian [/I]editor Alan Rusbridger. ADVERTISING The Tories have made little progress in reining in the “Blob”. Whitehall sinks every project that insults its sensibilities – most recently the Prime Minister’s gumptious hopes to make Britain the Qatar of hydrogen. And so much for the bonfire of the quangos; in fact, their spending has tripled under the Tories. Though the Government likes to reassure its supporters that it knows these organisations are compromised by bias, it lacks the will to tackle the problem head on. Many Tories have long suspected that the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, has been treating Brexiteers unfairly, but the Prime Minister retreated from battle last week as soon as he realised that it would be politically controversial. The Government has also failed to challenge the political appointments watchdog’s intervention in the recruitment process for top quango jobs. It was reported this week that the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments blocked Tory-endorsed interview panellists for the role of BBC chairman, as well board members for the British Film Institute and the Office for Students. This was justified on the basis that those put forward weren’t “independent”. The problem is partly that the power of the soft Left establishment is even stickier than many Brexiteers imagined. It has rigged the system by elevating “process” to an almost spiritual status, while subjectively defining the qualities candidates need to succeed. This includes the gold-standard ideal of “objectivity”, or “impartiality”. The meaning of these words has been reinvented for the post-modern era, from a commitment to logically revealed truth to a “balanced” positioning between extremities, which tends to mean a commitment to a socially liberal form of technocratic [URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/07/21/conservative-party-must-now-reject-vacuous-centrism-rory-stewart/']“centrism”[/URL]. Equally, since Blair, the definition of “diversity” has been restricted to refer only to professional women and ethnic minorities, who conveniently tend towards a centre-Left worldview, rather than greater openness to the working-class or laymen. Clearly, to overthrow such a regime, the Tories require an argument stronger than the need to politically “rebalance” the system. Such a weak justification leaves them open to charges of nepotism. Instead they should be exposing the lies and artifice that underpin the power of this elite, and opening public bodies to democratic oversight. They have made some headway on a few fronts. Oliver Dowden’s move as culture secretary to set up a new board to discuss how heritage organisations can educate the public about their past, without succumbing to the anti-statue brigade – with members including Trevor Phillips, the former director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the historian Robert Tombs – was a cleverly balanced response to an issue that the liberal Left views through a hysterical lens. Although it was attacked by the woke industrial complex, the[URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/meet-tony-sewell-man-took-race-clique/'] race report [/URL]the Government commissioned which found no evidence of structural racism in this country was subversively daring. Yet elsewhere they have shown that they have little stomach for a real fight. While they are happy to lambast the BBC’s false claims of impartiality, their threatened “showdown” with the broadcaster amounts to little more than populist rhetoric. Meanwhile, Conservatives who have managed to penetrate the quangos are inevitably almost always a “moderate”, and usually a Remainer. Most dispiritingly, the Government seems to think it has to work within the grain of the existing system, rather than unpick its very foundations. But it’s not good enough to replace one quango with another: as O’Sullivan’s law states, institutions that are not explicitly Right-wing will tend to become Left-wing over time. They could, for example, be seeking to give citizens a greater stake in the system. The National Lottery Community Fund’s regional committees, which have randomly recruited people from the electoral register before vetting them for public service, could be an alternative model for deciding quango selection panels. Members of the public could even be chosen “by lot” for secondment stints in select public roles. Such a shift would have the added advantage of challenging the elite’s reverence for “specialisation” and “expertise”. It’s a nonsense that all public roles require “expert” professionals to hold them. But the Tories cannot do nothing. The institutional resistance of public bodies to conservative policies will only get worse over time. Leaving these bodies in the hands of the [URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/28/fury-elite-remainers-making-increasingly-anti-british/']same old figures [/URL]also effectively overrules the democratic rejection of the elite old guard that Brexit embodied. The public will not put up indefinitely with being ruled by a professional elite that does not see the world like them. [IMG]https://static.telegraph.co.uk/aem/martech/tgt-506-politics-headlines/politics_headline.png[/IMG] Politics Headlines Your personal political briefing, delivered to your inbox every day Sign up Related Topics [LIST] [*][URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tony-blair/']Tony Blair, [/URL] [*][URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/bbc/']BBC, [/URL] [*][URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/boris-johnson/']Boris Johnson[/URL] [/LIST] [URL='https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/08/11-years-tory-rule-britain-still-run-hypocritical-blairite-elite/#comment'][/URL] [/QUOTE]
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