Lewis Goodall And Right-Wing Hypocrisy

Cancel culture. Invented by the self-pitying right in order to blame someone else for their own failings. The “someone else” is usually defined as the “liberal elite”, people who are “woke”, and invariably part of a social media mob driven on by the inevitable presence of Rotten Lefties™. The right, of course, would never whip up the mob in order to get anyone else cancelled, believing as they do in FREEZE PEACH. And to that I call bullshit.

Lewis Goodall

Those out there on the right have no compunction in whipping up the mob in order to get someone they perceive as being on the left taken down - even to get them sacked. We have seen this over the past 24 hours as they have gone after Lewis Goodall, whose day job is as policy editor for BBC Newsnight. His transgression is to have written an article for the Staggers. The bile, mob pursuit and stinking hypocrisy followed close behind.

Self-awareness failure, much?

Firing the starting gun on this pursuit was Robbie Gibb, who without any sign of self-awareness blustered “Is there anyone more damaging to the BBC's reputation for impartiality than [Lewis Goodall]? This is so off the scale I don't even know where to begin”. Michael Rosen reminded him “What did you do for the BBC's reputation, Robbie? Weren't you parti pris?” And Stephen Kinsella had another reminder for Gibb.

No bias here, honestly

“I expect that if Lewis had a brother involved in this scandal he would be ethical enough to declare that fact.”. Nick Gibb, as the Guardian has helpfully pointed out, has admitted he was warned about concerns over the algorithm used to “standardise” A-Level grades.

No matter, the right had now been dog-whistled into action, and soon came a broadside from the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, where apprentice sandwich monitor Christian Calgie gave the game away in no style at all as he spluttered “That is not appropriate from the supposedly neutral policy editor at BBC Newsnight. Goodall should resign. Or be fired”. Only the left does Cancel Culture, eh?

The hypocrisy was not long in being called out: quite apart from Gibb having gone directly from heading up the BBC’s Westminster operation to become Theresa May’s director of communications, numerous BBC presenters have contributed op-ed pieces to right-leaning publications in the past. Andrew Marr is a regular at the Spectator; John Humphrys wrote a host of opinion pieces for the Daily Mail. And then there is Andrew Neil.

Brillo has been given sufficient leeway by the BBC to carry on running the Spectator for the Barclay Brothers, continuing to employ the talents of Rod Liddle, Doug Murray The K, and self-confessed anti-Semite and neo-Nazi cheerleader Taki Theororacopulos. Worse, he has abused the platform given him by the Corporation, on one occasion using the Sunday Politics brand to promote climate change denial.

Yet there is no complaint from the right about any of that. Nor is there any complaint about the slew of right-leaning pundits - Fraser Nelson, Neil’s editor at the Speccy, the loathsome Toby Young, Darren Grimes, the world’s most inept form-filler, Fawkes teaboy Tom Harwood, Amanda Bloody Platell, self-promotion specialist Julia Hartley Dooda, and mercenary hack Isabel Oakeshott among them - using the Beeb to promote their views.

But good of the right to remind us that Cancel Culture is only done by Rotten Lefties™ to poor downtrodden right-wingers. Except when it isn’t. I’ll just leave that one there.

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