Laura K’s Contact Book Chaos

Broadcast on BBC2 last Monday was the first of a three-part series called State of Chaos, fronted by the Corporation’s former political editor Laura Kuenssberg, and was, ultimately, more about her contacts book, and the ridiculous attempts to “both sides” everything, than the claimed subject, the post-referendum civil war within the Tory party and its wider implications.

Lots of gossip from her contacts ...

Except there weren’t many of those wider implications. Ms Kuenssberg becomes fixated upon trivia such as “civil servant Simon McDonald had let on to Foreign Office colleagues that he was a Remainer”. So what? Would she care to tell viewers how this impacted upon his ability to discharge his duties with due impartiality? Then she can tell Robbie Gibb, too.

Sadly, as the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph concedes, “Some of these [talking heads] are usual-suspect rent-a-gobs”. Like former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who had no part in the Tory party infighting, or indeed any of the Brexit negotiations.

So there was no point in her wasting her time with him. The Guardian, at least, hints at the real problem for Ms Kuenssberg, after noting “It offers a portrait of baffled officials, from ministers to civil servants, splashing around in the muck, out of their depth, sometimes pointing a finger at somebody else”. As usual, when the Tories foul up, it’s someone else’s fault. There is more.

... but nothing about his lying ...

“There is a great display of the BBC’s grand balancing act throughout [like “here’s a Professor in European studies, and on the other hand, here’s Darren Grimes”], though notably, the only Labour figure interviewed in the opening episode is Hilary Benn”. The leader of the opposition in 2016, and after the departure of Theresa May, was Jeremy Corbyn. Where is his take on the chaos unfolding across the Dispatch Box? We don’t get to hear that.

We do get “Kuenssberg suggests that this is the moment a ‘new, radical ugliness began to emerge’ in British politics”. Maybe one day we will also get her part in that: not calling out Vote Leave for breaking electoral law, and not saying boo about the constant lying from the likes of Matthew Elliott, and former chief Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings.

Then the Guardian tells “The programme is sprawling, yet it feels as though people are missing: the biggest characters in this carousel of chaos do not appear, and their absence is notable”. Who might that include? Well, anyone from the EU side, from where the pressures came that helped to sink Ms May. No Michel Barnier. No Ursula von der Leyen. No Guy Verhofstadt.

... maybe he would like to comment?

After all, if we get Farage, we should hear from those he so loudly and dishonesty slags off. But that’s the BBC “both sides-ism” writ large. It does not occur to Ms Kuenssberg that if we are talking about Brexit, the “both sides” should include mainstream European figures. Instead, it means airtime for Mr Thirsty, and nonentities like alleged Tory hard man Steve Baker.

Alexander Clarkson of KCL certainly noticed. “There is something epically absurd in a BBC documentary claiming to tell the story of the impact of the UK leaving the EU on the British political system that manages to not talk to anyone from the EU side including Ireland, nor anyone in Scottish, NI or Welsh politics”. Point, given Scotland voted overwhelmingly to Remain.

There was more: “not a single EU or Irish, Northern Irish or Scottish leader setting out all the factors external to Westminster that constrained May's freedom of action within it … As long as the story of Brexit is presented on the BBC and other key media as merely a matter of Westminster politicians negotiating with other Westminster politicians then the UK state and party system will keep making the same mistakes over and over again”. Quite.

As Patrick Howse put it in a Byline Times article, “What they got [Ms Kuenssberg] was a journalist with access to the upper reaches of the Government, with a determination to get on air and tell everyone the whispers that she had heard from ministers, advisors and officials - before Sky or ITN [but] What the BBC needed was someone who could take a step back, away from the scrum, and tell audiences when they were being lied to. That was something neither the BBC nor Kuenssberg has ever come to terms with”.

Flawed former political editor makes flawed TV series. No surprise there.

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