Charles Moore Charles Moore

Mufti Patel and the problem with the BBC’s leadership debate

As Boris’s team should have predicted, the BBC, via Emily Maitlis, attacked Boris throughout the Tory leadership debate. So did its coverage the following morning. ‘Words are actions,’ said Nick Robinson on Today, sententiously editorialising. ‘Again and again Boris Johnson gets his words wrong.’ Up duly pop Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Heathrow airport expansion and the precise wording of the promise to leave on 31 October — all licensed to do so by the weak decision to let Boris go on.

Such debates are structured against Conservatives and conservatism.

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