With all the current huffing and puffing and virtue signalling (and sheer lying) cascading from the US and UK media over President Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration, Don Surber’s “Trump The Press” (available both in the USA and UK) offers a timely antidote to their hysterical rantings and distortions.

It’s a must read, not only for US pundits and hacks but also for their fellow scribblers here in the UK who mostly copy/paste them…(yes. including you DailyTelegraph) Mr Surber records some of the most embarrassing quotes from almost every big league American political commentator from both left and right who, imprisoned by their own bias and arrogance, failed to use those time honoured ancient journalistic skills of wearing out shoe leather to find out why millions of ordinary Americans were ignoring their advice.

If some of the sneering, contempt and sheer bias seems familiar this side of the pond it is because there are echoes here of the same failings from our own UK “experts” over the Brexit campaign.

Written with sardonic humour this is nevertheless a massive indictment of a profession that, though still dining out on Watergate, is, in essence, seeking approval by looking into the mirror.

BTW – I didn’t steal this from the review on Amazon UK….it was my review!!!!

Surber on experts and pundits

….and, of course, the highly regarded Chris Cillizza

Meanwhile, from giants of the right…

But the quote I loved the best because it is so true not just in America but here in Britain

On the surface a book that will make you smile at the cluelessness of these professionals – but, on reflection, also a tragedy when you realise it is also a sorry tale illustrating a collapse of integrity.

Buy the whole book – you’ll enjoy it…..

According to Guido Tony Blair has finally grasped that a return to front line politics is a definite no no

 I can’t come into front-line politics. There’s just too much hostility, and also there are elements of the media who would literally move to destroy mode if I tried to do that

But he is still convinced he has his finger on the pulse of the British people

Blair says there are millions of “politically homeless” people in Britain

You don’t have to be a genius, of course, to realise his idea of the politically homeless does not refer to the Sunderlands and Dudleys and those millions of other working class voters who used the referendum to give a V sign to all the great and the good.

Clearly he means people like him – pro EU, metropolitan, internationally minded, virtue signaling and well salaried members of the chattering classes….Blairite, Lib Dem and oh so Green

So he intends to work behind the scenes, using his wealth and contacts to help  build a platform for these folk to exchange ideas and share a vision and comfort each other through the post referendum, post Trump dark days

Problem is there already exists a ready made platform for such people that is also run by them – and it’s taxpayer funded…

The BBC……

Reading the Daily Telegraph and/or The Spectator, both (reputedly) right wing organs one could be forgiven for thinking nothing much has happened during the period leading up to the Presidential election next November – except for a weekly sneer about Donald Trump. You just wouldn’t realise that for half a year several people have been jockeying for the Republican Party nomination.

Of course within a few days, starting with the Iowa caucus, there will have to be some column inches but the hacks will be operating in the dark without a compass. They have no bearings.

They have no bearings because, of course, reporting US politics is almost always a cut and paste job for the Brit hacks. They check the US media, find out what the pundits and the consultants and the academics are saying – then they alter one or two words and phrases and regurgitate the message to UK eyes.

Only the 2016 race is not going to plan.

It was all going to be so simple. Back in the early summer the Republican Party establishment had it all sussed out. The summer and early autumn would thin the ranks. “Outsiders” like Trump and Carson would flare brightly for a few weeks and then flame out. The young bloods like Rand, Walker, Rubio and Cruz would tear each other apart for the “conservative” vote and then former governor of Florida Jeb Bush, rich with big donor cash and the support of regiments of consultants led by so called “genius” Karl Rove, would come through the middle. By October the media and GOP establishment would be crowning him the unofficial nominee and all would be set for the dynastic clash of Bush v Clinton in November 2016.

Except it didn’t pan out that way at all. Despite all those consultants and over $100m in donations and the support of the official conservative media Jeb never lifted from the ground.

Instead Donald Trump has stolen all the oxygen. Despite weekly predictions of demise from the punditocracy Trump polling lead has been consistent. Attacks from the left and right media have regularly missed the target. Not a single big name media figure has come out in support – and it seems that a lot of ordinary Americans don’t give a damn.

This is why in the Telegraph/Spectator the cover has faded. They can no longer cut and paste what the pundits/consultants/academics are saying because there is very little to cut and paste. Since early December the “experts” have clammed up, scared witless by public mockery of their failed predictions. There is a subdued sneering at Trump but that is all.

What has never appeared in the Telegraph/Spectator is a serious analysis attempting to explain the phenomenon of Trump. It is sometimes put down to anger and frustration amongst older white males but if you look at the thousands who attend the Trump rallies there are a lot of younger folk as well – and women.

There is some evidence of support from previously Democrat leaning blue collar workers and elements of the black community, constituencies in which none of the other GOP hopefuls could hope to gain any traction.

Pennsylvania, anyone?

Of course nothing is certain and casting political runes is ever an unpredictable game. But even if Trump was to eventually fade post February US politics can never be the same. As someone has said he has not only ignored the rule book – he’s ripped it up and written another,

But of course, nobody in the Telegraph/Spectator said that. They feel much more comfortable and cosy with their heads stuck up their own derrieres….

Rod Liddle at the Speccie has gone all Dan Brown and reckons he’s cracked the UKIP code….it’s a London thing…

 I suspect that the real pull of Ukip in England is that the party, and Mr Farage particularly, are seen as a corrective to the vapid, flaccid, spineless, politically correct and wholly London-centric mitherings of what, until May next year, we must call the main three parties.

I do love it when media hacks and TV pundits who know frack all about UKIP and its 40,000+ members pontificate about the motives of its supporters and why it is rising in the polls. Fact is these scribblers and prattlers have long lists of contacts in the lobby and among the bright young things at party HQ (whose parents they know from their own Oxbridge days)…they are all constantly networking, sharing gossip and swapping nannies.

UKIP leadership cadres simply do not move in these circles and, until a couple of years ago, were, at best, politely ignored or, more often, treated with contempt by these hacks. Even today, like their political contacts in the three main parties they cannot bring themselves to contemplate the possibility that the tectonic plates have shifted. Come “real politics” next May they are convinced that UKIP will fade away and once again North London dinner parties will be where it’s all happening. – so why bother to cultivate any UKIP contacts?

Hence the tendency to treat the party in a similar way to those newly discovered tribes from the depths of the Amazonian forest. There are a few photos published in the Daily Mail alongside a report big on hype and short on facts, a brief flurry of media interest that peters out after six days – and then the whole story just..evaporates.

I suppose it was a bit like that in St Petersburg in the last few months of 1916….

“Let’s calm down, Ukip’s popularity won’t last” proclaims David Aaronovitch from the peaks of Mt Olympus in Islington

“Association with Ukip and the bigots in its core membership won’t help the Tories pick up those votes.” simpers bright young Tory thing Kate Maltby

“Nigel Forage’s earthquake seems remarkably short on aftershocks” sniggers The DT’s political guru Benedict Brogan (Remember Brogan’s insightful “UKIP slipping” prediction just before the recent elections?)

Only three of hundreds of articles about UKIP that have been scribbled by metropolitan hacks over the last few months. From the Telegraph alone you would set your chimney alight if you tried to burn them all at once. “Analysing” UKIP has proved a goldmine, especially for the mainly white middle class penpushers and keyboard tappers who infest the broadsheet “Comment” pages. Pontificating from their book lined studies in their million pound houses in Notting Hill and Islington they predict the future with the arrogant confidence of those Roman seers who would tell you your fortune after slitting open a live chicken and throwing it’s entrails across a glistening marble floor –for a few pieces of gold, of course.

The Roman seers can be given the benefit of doubt because they could claim to be operating at a time when a belief in magic and the powers of the supernatural was deeply embedded within the culture of the time.

We should not give our broadsheet hacks such an easy way out.

The fact is that not any one of them is able to make any prediction based on incontrovertible data. They know very little about UKIP. Since when did any of them make any effort to highlight anyone from the party other than Nigel Farage – apart from recycling any smear or innuendo dug up by unpaid interns from Tory HQ. How many times have they contacted local branches to get some sort of insight into who these UKIP members are and why they joined? Why is any interview driven by references to oddball quotes (both true and untrue) by a tiny minority of members?

It’s because they just cannot grasp the concept of a party that has managed to move from the outer edges of the political fringe to the centre of public debate within two years. It is a phenomenon that is as far from their view of the world as the ships and muskets of the Spanish must have been to the native tribes of America.

None of the leadership cadre has ever been a big player in the political arena. They are not regular attendees at North London dinner parties. They have never been part of the Westminster village. They do not mix or marry into the media elite.

Their voters are from deeply unfashionable places – Great Yarmouth, Lincolnshire, Rotherham, Dudley, Thurrock, and Portsmouth. Their roots are from both the Tories and Labour – and many have never had any interest in politics before.

It’s like an alien invasion. Who the hell are these people – and what do they want? Why are they here? It’s an intriguing moment when proper journalists should be eager to expend shoe leather in answering these questions.

Instead you get people like Aaronovitch blithely predicting the future course of UKIP without even cutting up a chicken.

Evidence based analysis? My arse!!! It’s more like Political Astrology…..

Probably the most significant outcome of the Farage/Clegg debate was not so much the verbal fencing of the discussion itself but the final piece of evidence proving, if any further proof were needed that, with regard to UKIP most of the media establishment is as out of touch with the views of the man and woman on the street as the political class which claims to represent them.

I’m not talking about the liberal/left ramparts of The Guardian or Daily Mirror – at least the bias in those quarters is so blatant that one can immediately discount much of their “reporting” or “comment”. But the barrage of sneering anti UKIP bile filling the pages of the Telegraph and Mail, both supposedly rightward leaning and Eurosceptic, has certainly puzzled many of us in UKIP.

Many have suggested that the Telegraph/Mail have merely been pimping Tory HQ propaganda as part of a campaign to buttress Cameron. Yet the Mail is often scathing about Dave so I cannot see the Tory HQ line as being the whole story.

My feeling is that, though “journalists” work for media outlets that have varying political stances, the bulk of them are all part of the London media “village” and intermingle professionally and socially not just with each other but with the political class. All of them see politics as a political game where the terms of the debate are exclusively set by the metropolitan elite and the role of the electorate is to be as passive as a TV audience, maybe cheering or booing on cue, but otherwise happy to leave decisions about the important issues to the “professionals” who know best.

What these people hate about UKIP is that it is a party of political outsiders with no connection to the metropolitan elite. No political “big beast” SDP type defections have brought the party into the dinner party conversations in North London. They hasten to characterise UKIP members, supporters and potential voters as simple minded, racist, ignorant etc but they have made no attempt to get to know UKIP members or treat their views seriously.

The result? They constantly get blindsided…

During and immediately after the debate, Westminster observers appeared to come down on the side of Clegg – or that both men had performed competently. Initially, Lib Dem cheerleaders apparently satisfied with the performance of their leader and several “gaffes” from Farage, who they pointed out appeared to denigrate the European car industry and claimed the EU had “blood on its hands” over Ukraine.

“The truth is it was a score draw,” said Andrew Mitchell, the senior Conservative backbencher and former chief whip.

However, the mood shifted to visible disappointment in the Clegg camp as the first opinion polls showed Farage was ahead by 57% to 36%.

Asked whether the loss mattered, one Lib Dem aide said philosophically: “In a snap poll, populist arguments may well win over. The real win tonight has been that we wanted this debate and talked directly to the voters.”

Let’s face it – the media hacks were all caught with their trousers down

Backstage, Westminster’s hack-pack was necking cheap vino and Pret sandwiches after carrying out a spectacular volte face. Initially ‘the spin room’ had called the duel for Clegg, on both style and substance. But, as news of the Sun/YouGov poll filtered through to the scribblers, headlines were rewritten and awkward tweets deleted. Soon, only the BBC was left flying the Clegg flag, with the help of Danny Alexander and Tim Farron.

The moral of the story? Simples… On every Mail snide anti UKIP piece, or Tim Stanley/Dan Hodges ill informed rant, or snooty dinner party Spectator put down keep on hammering the comments with the phrases that wind them up…..LibLabCon, Tory HQ agitprop, out-of-touch media luvvies….believe me those remarks really get under their collective skin.

The media expects to be courted. Until the age of the internet there was no other option if you wished to be heard. But today is different. Journalists are ranked with estate agents, car salesmen and pimps. They don’t need to be courted – when they lie and distort and misreport they need to be exposed and attacked from every angle.

Seeing the significantly unamusing Marl Steel introduced on last week’s HIGNFY as a “left wing comedian” was the last straw. OK so Hislop suddenly came on fire re Leveson/Press Control and there was a joke about Mehdi Hasan – but notice Steel and Merton didn’t join in.

As Will Self has said the prospect of Merton and Hislop sounding off against bankers and assorted “fatcats”  is a bit rich when you consider they get paid several thousands of taxpayers money per programme and both must be raking in very generous six figure incomes (and using perfectly “legal” tax avoiding strategies).

Add  the regiment of left wing “comedians” who pop up on HIGNFY and scores of other panel shows and you have an overwhelming barrage of left groupthink moulded along Guardian/BBC lines bombarding us practically every evening.

So, time to pitch a new “concept” panel show to BBC/ITV/Ch4. Usual studio set up, long bench, MC in the middle, arselicking fawning audience laughing at every remark as if THEY ARE, LIKE, JUST THE FUNNIEST EVAH….

But, with a different panel..

MELANIE PHILLIPS

DOUGLAS MURRAY

DAVID STARKEY

DANIEL HANNAN

All chaired by NIGEL FARAGE…

It would be called MTL….Mock The Left…because the constant target would be the beloved icons of the left…Atheists, the EU, the UN, Barack Obama, Greenpeace, Hamas, Hollywood. Kirsty Wark etc. Points would be given for biggest Lie, the worst example of Hypocrisy and the most barefaced manifestation of Outrageous Outrage emanating from the North London chattering classes. A permanent feature of each show would be three balloons bearing the faces of Polly Toynbee, John Prescott and George Monbiot. Every week each balloon would be pricked to great cheers from the audience after a particularly pompous and self opinionated quote from the appropriate individual.

The show would end with a classic pseuds corner extract from the arts pages of The Guardian and the paper would then be burned and stuffed down a toilet to great cheers from the audience…

OK BBC/ITV/Ch4……I’m waiting for your call…..

For a second my heart was sinking. Was Caitlin Moran, that courageous campaigner against Twitter abuse, herself guilty of a Twitter hate crime?

But all’s well – her tweet wasn’t a vicious attack on Muslims, only against Catholics and, as we know, in the rarified atmosphere of the metropolitan media chattering class, Catholics and other Christians don’t count….

The Catholic Church – they hate women and fuck kids. On a day-to-day level, that's a tough sell.

— Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) July 15, 2010

Mind you there’s always one unenlightened cynic ready to drip poison…

That is a revolting slur on hundreds of millions of members of the Church, including the overwhelming majority of Catholic clergy. 

There’s also another religious grouping she could’ve applied those tasteful “comments” to with equal lack of foundation. But then she wouldn’t have had the balls.

Oh Morningcloak….when I read your comment at this article I just knew you had a heart of stone….or maybe not…

Over the last fortnight or so those bastions of the right wing press, the Telegraph and Mail, have been feeding us the narrative that David Cameron has shot the UKIP fox by sounding tough on the EU and immigration, chatting to Tory backbenchers over a Downing Street BBQ and listening to elections guru Lynton Crosby – all on the basis of one poll (several others give a different picture)

Doubtless the bright young things at Tory HQ have been schmoozing the lobby correspondents and political hacks at the DT/DM who have responded accordingly. After all they inhabit the same Westminster political/media village and, let’s face it, that village is far away from Norfolk, South Shields, Somerset or even the London suburbs, not so much geographically as temperamentally.

This is why they find the rise of UKIP as incomprehensible – it simply does not fit within the confines of the political box that constrains their view. They can only interpret events in terms of Con/Lab/Lib because….well…that’s the way it’s always been, ennit….

What they have failed to grasp is the possibility that a bunch of outsiders, with little or no contact with media hacks, lobbyists, academics, civil servants and other members of the establishment elite should begin to insert themselves into the body politic by making inroads into the electorate.

UKIP might well dip in certain polling reports as the media files the party under B for Blip – but there are certain key points that the “experts” need to remember

UKIP now have a substantial presence on quite a few local councils, controlling one and either holding the balance of power or forming the opposition in several others – party members are getting the experience of local government.

Over the last few months tens of thousands of people have joined UKIP, getting the party closer to the first goal of overtaking the Lib Dems 42,000

The party is busily consolidating and professionalising itself, using the next few months to prepare for the EU and local elections next May.

Unlike Con/Lab/Lib these new members display a degree of energy and enthusiasm that has long since drained away from the established parties

Issues such as EU membership and Immigration have only begun to be part of public debate because for many years UKIP was the only party that consistently attempted to confront them.

Above all this, however, it is not just through “policies” that political parties begin to gain traction. It is when the rest of the electorate realise that a substantial number of their fellow voters are willing to nail their colours to the party’s mast.

There has long been a disconnect between ordinary folk and the political class, evidenced by lower voter turnouts and declining party memberships. Voters began politicians and the press and broadcast “journalists” who supposedly “hold them to account”   as performers in a carefully choreographed shadow play that demanded a submissive and silent audience which could only cheer or boo on cue….a bit like the BBC’s HIGNFY

But now UKIP has given the audience the opportunity not only to get up onto the stage but also the chance to send the old established “star performers” out of the stage door and onto the pavement…

….and, believe me, the old guard don’t like it – and they will play every dirty trick in the book to keep UKIP out of the loop and break it.

Fellow UKIP members – you have been warned!!!!!

Hot Air recently mocked Chris Matthews when he predicted a Hillary Clinton White House from 2016 until 2024. But when you consider how deeply the US media elite would be in the tank for the lady the prospect should be worrying. The fact that originally she was just the wife of a famous politician who was parachuted into a Senate seat far away from her home state and sat there for four years with a record as bland as Obama’s in the same place matters not a jot. As Secretary of State her impact on global matters was minimal. America’s rivals and enemies – Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – were able to relax, secure in the knowledge that the Obama/Clinton regime was content to spend their time in the far corner of the school yard picking daisies while the school bullies went about their business with impunity.

Nevertheless, for some reason, Clinton is portrayed in the media as some sort of superwoman earth mother, wise beyond her years. Between them Tina Brown and Sandra Fluke and their cohorts will give Hillary the easiest of rides to the White House, buttressed, almost certainly, by Barack Obama, whose endorsement will swing the Democrat machine and the rainbow coalition foursquare behind her…..and the reason for that should be obvious. Obama has his eye on the election of 2024 – and the candidacy of Michelle Obama.

When Barack Obama leaves the White House for his post as Secretary General of the UN I guarantee that some obliging Democrat in the Senate will be appointed to Hillary’s cabinet, triggering off a special election – enter Michelle. By 2023, when the jockeying for the Democrat primaries begin, Michelle will be a shoo in. The Media will go bananas for her and once more there will be a Chicago machine hack in the Oval Office – until 2032….when Senator Chelsea Clinton will be 42 years old – which will be Malia Obama’s age in 2040…….

Fantasy or nightmare?