NOVANEWS
By QUENTIN LETTS
20 February 2014
For three days the Mail has published shocking details about how leading Labour politicians once supported a vile group that campaigned to legalise child sex. They include Labour’s current deputy leader, Harriet Harman. Yet, astonishingly, the BBC has not touched the story — presumably because those involved are from the Left. But what if the three politicians had been Tories? QUENTIN LETTS imagines how things would have been so very different.
PIP PIP PIP . . .
‘We will be covering this major breaking story throughout the programme, but first we go live to Jim Naughtie who is outside the London home of the couple involved’
‘Good morning, it’s six o’clock and this is the Today Programme on Radio 4 with Evan Davis and Mishal Husain.’
‘And the main news: Three leading Conservative politicians are accused of links to a group which campaigned to legalise sex with children.
‘Those involved include the deputy leader of the party, her spouse and a former Cabinet minister.
‘We will be covering this major breaking story throughout the programme, but first we go live to Jim Naughtie who is outside the London home of the couple involved.
‘Jim, any comment from them or indeed from the Conservative Party? Or have they gone into hiding?’
6.10am: The Today programme takes its first look at the morning’s national newspapers and ‘there’s really only one story — that of the child-sex allegations being made against three leading Tories — with The Guardian breaking the story in its first edition last night. Another remarkable scoop for the paper’.
6.30: The BBC website swiftly clears the decks. Its usual news-page format is replaced by a banner screaming ‘Sex crisis for Cameron — can the Tories survive?’ Lower down, a box asks: ‘Were you a victim of paedophilia in the 1970s and 1980s? Tell us what you think.’
7.15: The Labour Party announces its ‘disquiet, concern, sorrow, dismay’ at the allegations. Ed Miliband’s office says that he will hold a press conference later in the morning.
7.30: Radio Five Live ‘doorsteps’ the chairman of the Conservative Party as he leaves home for work. Camera crews from BBC TV News, ITN and Sky News shove him against his chauffeur-driven car and ask if he condones his senior colleagues’ past endorsement of the Paedophile Information Exchange.
7.55: Evan Davis tweets: ‘Having problems finding Tory MP prepared to be interviewed. Any takers, please?’ The actor Stephen Fry tweets back: ‘Evan, I thought you’d never ask!’
8.05: John Prescott is awake. Or at least, his Twitter feed (said to be written by one of his sons) has burst into life. It cracks a joke of dubious taste. Soon, various followers of @JohnPrescott respond with jokes of their own.
Commons Speaker’s wife Sally Bercow has not yet stirred, but that may be because she was out on the toot last night.
Meanwhile, the top-of-the-hour bulletins on Radios 1, 2, 3 and 6, and all BBC local stations put the Tory child-sex story at the top of their news lists. Radio Five Live announces it will conduct a phone-in entitled ‘Is it ever right to go easy on paedophiles?’
8.35: A BBC Breakfast interview with the Conservative Minister for Roads, who thought he was going to be discussing potholes, ends with him storming out of the studio after presenter Bill Turnbull ‘does a Paxman’ and asks the minister ten times if he thinks the deputy leader of his party should resign.
9.20: Russell Brand tweets that ‘ooh, missus, I never knew the dirty Tories had it in ’em’. Labour tough guy Alastair Campbell has erupted! During a spittle-flecked, finger-pointing interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, he accuses the Tories of ‘serial immorality’ and a ‘fatal disconnect from British values’. Quite unlike himself!
‘Alastair Campbell has erupted! During a spittle-flecked, finger-pointing interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, he accuses the Tories of “serial immorality” and a “fatal disconnect from British values”. Quite unlike himself!’
9.40: The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, grants an Urgent Question in the Commons, to ensure that the issue is raised in Parliament. The National Union of Teachers calls for an immediate review of child-protection laws. The National Union of Journalists praises the reporter who broke the story.
10.45: Ed Miliband holds his press conference. His tone is sombre, his tie black. Around him stand several of his party’s female MPs wearing expressions of pursed-lipped concern. Rev Paul Flowers, disgraced ex-chairman of the Labour-supporting Co-op Bank, who was questioned by police over alleged drugs offences and who was accused of paying for sex with rent boys, is not invited.
Mr Miliband urges the Tory Party to ‘put its house in order for the good of British politics’. The event is covered live on the BBC News Channel and Sky News.
11.15: Sally Bercow has surfaced, but she has not yet tweeted. Perhaps she left her phone in the back of a taxi last night. Or perhaps her libel lawyers have thrown it in the Thames.
Noon: The so-called ‘news narrative’ is now as much about ‘the Conservative Party in disarray’ as it is about the original allegations about the three politicians who once endorsed paedophiles’ demands to lower the age of sexual consent.
‘Time for BBC2’s Newsnight – and editor Ian Katz, formerly of the Guardian, has excelled himself. Jeremy Paxman is dressed as Whack-O! actor Jimmy Edwards with a cane’
Every Tory MP and peer entering the Palace of Westminster is asked for a comment by TV ‘ambush’ teams. Some shield their faces with newspapers. Others tell the reporters to get stuffed. One knight of the shires even kicks a BBC reporter. All this is duly captured on screen and is run as an edited ‘package’ for the lunchtime news programmes on network channels.
2.10pm: Robert Peston bursts into the BBC newsroom with a hot scoop. Unfortunately no one can understand a word he is saying.
3.0: After a three-hour meeting of the Lib Dem high command, Nick Clegg says ‘this is no time to play politics’ and settles for thanking the media for ‘bringing these important matters to public attention’.
Surprise, surprise, no mention of the party’s former chief executive, Lord Rennard, who was recently investigated over claims he sexually pestered young female party members.
3.18: Live to New Scotland Yard where Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe announces the Metropolitan Police will investigate complaints from a Labour backbencher that senior Tories knowingly consorted with a paedophilia ring. ‘The allegation dates back 30 years, but, as we saw in the Jimmy Savile case, the passage of time does not buy you innocence,’ he says severely.
3.30: The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal-designate Vincent Nichols, says he is ‘praying for all victims of paedophilia’.
5.07: An internet petition condemning ‘child sex sympathising political sleazeballs’ has been signed by thousands of people, many of them bored civil servants sitting in Whitehall offices.
Celebrity tweeters publicising the petition include comedian Eddie Izzard, Dr Who writer Russell T.
Davies, Green Wing actor Stephen Mangan, Labour-supporting Baldrick actor Sir Tony ‘Baldrick’ Robinson and Radio Five Live presenter Richard Bacon.
5.30: The New Statesman magazine says it has changed its front cover for this week’s issue to reflect this major political story. Labour MP Keith Vaz announces a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into civil liberties and sex policy.
‘Ed Miliband holds his press conference. His tone is sombre, his tie black. Around him stand several of his party’s female MPs wearing expressions of pursed-lipped concern’
Lawyers from the Leveson Inquiry into Press ethics are spotted with copies of the Guardian newspaper which first ran the disclosures.
Feminists at the equality campaign group the Fawcett Society go on hunger strike until the named politicians are expelled from the Tory Party.
6.0: The story is so important that BBC TV newscaster George Alagiah presents the Six O’Clock News from College Green, outside Parliament. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper gives an inflammatory interview, even while managing to look as sad as a scolded spaniel. She says it is ‘time for an inquiry into the culture and practices of the Conservative Party’. Political websites talk of ‘the return of sleaze’ and predict a Blair-style landslide for Ed Miliband in 2015.
7.0: Jon Snow has flown back from some foreign war-zone to present a ‘special’ Channel 4 News devoted entirely to the sex scandal. Psychologists analyse why Right-wing politicians ‘have a problem with sex’, and a quick-turnaround opinion poll finds that 90 per cent of people think the Coalition has ‘mishandled’ the scandal.
Snow asks Tory grandee Ken Clarke: ‘Why has the PM not sacked the deputy leader of his party? Is it because he is too weak?’ Clarke, ever the loyalist, says: ‘Probably.’
10.30: Time for BBC2’s Newsnight — and editor Ian Katz, formerly of the Guardian, has excelled himself. Jeremy Paxman is dressed as Whack-O! actor Jimmy Edwards with a cane. Kirsty Wark is in a dominatrix costume. Reporter Emily Maitlis visits a brothel in Chelsea to interview vice girls, who tell her about clients who are ‘Tory types wanting them to wear school uniforms’.
Katz later wins a prize for his ‘no-holds barred’ reporting. No holds barred? If only that were true of the BBC and Britain’s Left-wing establishment when it came to the scandal that dare not speak its name: the true story of Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information Exchange.
