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Revealed: The Tory Party’s bully boy spinners

May 28, 2012 1:41 pm

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Last week their was a piece in The Times by Rachel Sylvester that sought to resurrect the old Ed Balls bully boy line (I wrote for the New Statesman on why I think it’s all a bit old hat).

Yet the media has never been interested enough, brave enough or (perhaps more likely) politically motivated enough to report on the bully boy culture that exists towards the media from the supposedly cuddly new Tory Party. Until – perhaps – now.

This morning it came to light that former Boris spinner Gutto Harri had sent the following email to a BBC journalist during the election campaign:

“Dear Will. We are all sick of this at City Hall, and increasingly at Number 10. BBC London is in danger of causing real problems to all of us.”

A not so coded threat. But it gets worse. Was Gutto angry about coverage like this, where BoJo lost his temper over quite reasonable questions relating to Johnson’s relationship with News International? After the election Gutto Harri became the head spinner for News International. His replacement? Will Walden – a BBC journalist, and the recipient of the above email.

So much for that lefty bias eh?

Presumably you’re thinking that this all smells rather fishy. You’d be right. And to top it all off, Boris attacked the BBC immediately after the election (despite previously having admitted that he rarely watches it). Evidently he was following in Gutto’s footsteps.

Harri also threatened that ”good friends in No 10″ could be deployed against the BBC. How about Cameron spinner Craig Oliver, another former BBC man (like Harri) – that lefty bias again. Well we’ve seen today that Mr Oliver has no problem intimidating the BBC himself, as this video (h/t: Guido Fawkes), readily shows: Update: The Craig Oliver video has now been taken down. How convenient…

So I guess in future we’ll be hearing about the media manipulation of the Tory Party’s “bovver boys”, will we? I won’t be holding my breath – I fear our slavish press isn’t interested enough, brave enough or politically motivated enough…

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  • Jeremy_Preece

    As I understood it, the BBC is particularly vulnerable to Tory pressure at the moment.. The austerity measures make a really good argument for inflicting increasing cuts on the BBC, but more importantly there is a huge anger of Murdock and others over the BBC News internet.

    Generally the papers who support the Tories are very keen to see the BBC News pages got rid of or made subscription so that anyone who wants to see news on the internet is forced to subscribe to the very biased newspapers. Since the number of people who buy papers fall. the money is now seen as being with online news.

    This bullying of the BBC is actually a very serious threat to the whole of the idea of democracy.

    • charles.ward

       ”Generally the papers who support the Tories are very keen to see the BBC
      News pages got rid of or made subscription so that anyone who wants to
      see news on the internet is forced to subscribe to the very biased
      newspapers.”

      So, the public should be compelled to subscribe to the BBC through the license fee to avoid being “forced” to choose which of the many newspaper sites they wish to subscribe to.  The “Freedom is Slavery” argument.

      • Cuthulu

        Add a “Dexter” between “Charles” and “Ward” and I’d like you better.

        • postageincluded

           You might have to just wait dreaming for that.

  • charles.ward

    I find it hard to accept that Craig Oliver could be considered “intimidating” in that clip.  He seemed to be making his points in a perfectly calm and reasonable manner.  I’ve seen Alastair Campbell act a lot worse when he knew he was on camera.

    • AnotherOldBoy

      Alastair Campbell, Charlie Whelan, Damien McBryde: all due for sainthood in due course!  Straightforward, open persuasion used to be the rule, not behind the scenes bullying, intimidation and smearing like the present government!

  • Dburty

    hahahahahaha…beyond irony….is there an equivalent campbell video somewhere…would make that oliver one look like play school

  • Hugh

    Has anyone checked that Norman Smith is okay? It must have been terrifying for him.

  • davyh1

    This is evidence that the Cameron machine really is coming off the rails.

  • Loxxie

    The Sopranos it better!

  • http://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee Kulgan of Crydee

    If that is a bollocking, someone is a very sensitive soul!!! 

  • http://twitter.com/robertsjonathan Jonathan Roberts

    I’ve watched this video three times and I honestly can’t find the bully boy stuff.  He’s a PR man making a case to a journalist that he doesn’t believe the report was fair and balanced.  It’s his job.  He provided evidence for his argument in a reasonable, firm but fair way.  Whether he was right or wrong, it seemed to me like Craig Oliver was behaving in a professional way.

    If he had been effing and blinding, making threats and just genuinely being aggressive and unpleasant, then it would have been different.

    Oliver probably shouldn’t have walked off in a huff, but as Kulgan says, you’d have to be astonishingly sensitive to believe this was intimidation.  I fear some of our lot are (and were) far more aggressive.

    There’s enough to criticise this Government for – let’s stick to that.

    • Hugh

       ”If he had been effing and blinding, making threats and just genuinely
      being aggressive and unpleasant, then it would have been different.”

      Yes, it would have been like a conversation with a Labour spinner.

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