A few weeks ago, I received an invitation from Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director-General, to listen to Rutger Bregman deliver this year’s BBC Reith Lecture.
Rutger Bregman is the Dutch version of Owen Jones, famously going viral worldwide on TikTok after mocking the Davos elite to their faces. Bregman is the public intellectual du jour and darling of the Guardian reading classes. He is, you might think, an odd choice to follow in the heavyweight footsteps of the likes of previous Reith lecturers such as the philosopher Bertrand Russell or the physicists Robert Oppenheimer and Stephen Hawking.
The invitation included dinner afterwards (venison carpaccio, herb-crusted lamb rump followed by tarta de Santiago if you are interested). So it was that I found myself in the Broadcasting House Radio Theatre on a Tuesday night listening to Bregman deliver his ‘A Time of Monsters’ oration. Beforehand, the host Anita Anand made sure to tell me that she would look out for my raised hand during the Q&A afterwards. This was reiterated by the producer who sat me at the front. Bregman ranted about Trump and his tech bro allies (‘a bit fashy’), the rising danger of populists like Nigel Farage and warned that we are on the cusp of a neo-fascist era.
He argued for a counter-movement of the good and the kind along the lines of the anti-slavery movement. You can guess which humble campaigner Bregman has in mind to take the William Wilberforce role. The audience lapped it up, cheering every Trump jibe. Cowardly I decided not to ask a challenging question lest I came over ‘a bit fashy’.
The BBC unfortunately platformed this TikTok-ing Trump-hater the week after the US President decided to sue them. You will be able to hear for yourself the pre-recorded lecture scheduled to be broadcast next week.
At the end, after apologising to the producer for not asking a question, I went upstairs for dinner in the BBC’s council chamber. It began with a BBC panjandrum toasting Bregman for enlightening the British people; before moving on to Bregman asking the table to help him organise and fund his counter-populist campaign. A Scandinavian princess, after humbly explaining that she was only royal by marriage, urged us to support his progressive cause. An East Coast heiress philanthropist recounted her own struggles in the fight against Trump. Celebrity Traitor and the BBC’s in-house woke historian David Olusoga chipped in his thoughts. The surprisingly right-on new NFU president Tom Bradshaw nodded along. It was a bit much for Theresa Villiers, the Brexit-backing former Tory minister. She gave me a knowing look before making her excuses and leaving, declining dessert.
The all-round condemnation of the populists became more shrill as more wine was consumed. When I muttered that Nigel Farage was my friend it was as if I had admitted to bestiality, it triggered a rictus grin from the BBC bigwig sitting next to me and arched eyebrows from the BBC producer opposite. All of this took place at the table under what I perceived as the disapproving gaze of a portrait of Lord Reith, who must be spinning in his grave at what is being done in his name.
The main problem for Auntie in the current context is they chose a left-wing agitator the White House calls ‘rabid’ to deliver the Reith Lectures and thus implicitly endorses his message. On the night Bregman even thanked the BBC team for helping him to edit his lecture and suggest changes to his text.
The other problem is that even with heavy editing of the broadcast it will be hard to leave the listening audience with any sense other than that it has platformed a deranged anti-Trumper. Senior figures in Broadcasting House are a little concerned that they are snookered. They can’t edit out the Trump bashing as it was central to the lecture, yet when the broadcast goes out it. will confirm the feeling that the BBC has an anti-Trump agenda.
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