GB News actually sent 'reporter' Bev Turner to interview Trump, which, in the event, the FT suggested may have given fawning, obsequious North Korean broadcasters a run for their money.
The questions she came with were, according to the FT’s Edward Luce, variations on ‘how do you explain your success.’ They would have embarrassed a real journalist. I’m not sure where she’s been hiding these last six months, because it’s hard to think of any policy 'successes' that he hasn’t been forced to roll back on (tariffs) or where the courts haven’t blocked him (deploying the National Guard, for example). This is to say nothing of the imminent release of the Epstein files, which he vehemently opposed to the last second and which could easily bury him before Christmas.
At one point, she even told convicted felon and fraudster Trump that Washington under his presidency felt much safer than London, even though you are 26 times more likely to be murdered in the American capital than you are in ours. Trump lapped it all up, naturally. It was, Luce said, one reason why Trump is suing the BBC for $1 billion. They don't do interviews quite like GB News. Example:
"Having praised Trump on being a great parent, she asked: 'Does it ever occur to you how much the role is like being a father? Being president?' He loved that one."
It was reported this week that the murder rate in London under Sadiq Khan was the lowest it’s been for decades, possibly the lowest in history, yet she painted a picture of a city blighted by crime and with robbery or violent death waiting on every street corner.
The right have always played on the fear of crime, building it up while in opposition to help secure electoral victory, and certainly the Tories here usually try to present themselves as being the law and order party. But praising Trump right now seems to me to be a big mistake.
Getting out of a hole
A couple of economists have published some proposals on "getting Britain out of a hole." It has been praised in some quarters, even by Professor Chris Grey. But flicking through it, the paper is simply a rehash of a lot of other ideas that various commentators, ministers and parties have offered for decades.
The latest effort amounts to switching to lower-cost clean energy, investment in better transport links, reforming the tax system and - wait for it - “repairing Britain’s position in Europe’s manufacturing base.” All laudable aims, but the problem is finding the money in the first place and then devising and implementing the policies to achieve them.
In my opinion, however, Britain's problems are both deeper yet simpler. Other countries can cope with various tax regimes (often at much higher rates than ours), greater regulation and changes of government without struggling as we have to maintain a manufacturing base, build transport infrastructure or commit funds for clean energy. Why? What makes Britain different?
I think it is down to attitude, from the boardroom to the shop floor. Britain has some world-class businesses, just nowhere near enough of them.
Working for European companies, it’s quite easy to see that the difference is in the mindset, nothing to do with government policy. In fact, over nearly 40 years of working with or for European manufacturers, I can’t remember hearing anyone blaming their government’s policies for anything. Yet this is quite a common complaint among UK manufacturers.
When the German Deutschmark kept getting stronger in the 1980s, you didn’t hear Germans complaining; they simply tried to keep offering good value and world-beating products while being as efficient as possible. Contrast this with one British MD I worked for, who constantly moaned about the Sterling exchange rate, which he blamed for a lack of export success. Our German competitors were thriving at the time, selling products that were often twice our price!
Employees at the European companies I knew were invariably better educated, more motivated and certainly more serious about their jobs than the average British worker. The owners and managers were more experienced and knowledgeable about the industries they operated in, and were prepared to invest more, for longer periods and probably for lower initial returns than their British counterparts.
They weathered difficult times better, and there was more loyalty (both ways). They embraced new regulations, exploited advances in technology better, listened to their customers more (and acted on the feedback) and quickly adapted products to meet changing market demands.
If Britain had businesses with owners, managers and employees with the same approach, the same willingness to apply themselves, to take the work seriously, to invest more for the long term, to aim to be world leaders, there would be no need for all the fancy top-down government-driven “solutions” that you read in these reports.
Nathan Gill
Reform UK's former Welsh leader is to be sentenced later today for accepting bribes to push a pro-Kremlin narrative in the European Parliament in 2018-19 while he, his colleagues and Farage were MEPs. The BBC reveal that he was paid £8,600 for trying to get other MEPs, who have not been named by the prosecution, to do the same.
We also learn that he was arrested in Manchester as he was about to board a flight to Moscow to give a talk on cryptocurrencies at a Kremlin-backed convention.
What we don't know is why the Kremlin were happy to funnel money to Gill to do things that his own party leader was apparently happy to do for free. It's a puzzle, isn't it? Or is it?
