The efforts of the media to de-legitimise Ed Miliband’s leadership and simultaneously demonise the trade unions reached a bathetic low on BBC 2’s Daily Politics. Presenter Anita Anand interrupted GMB leader Paul Kenny’s on-screen defence of the vote among individual union members to say: “Hold on, you can’t classify them as individuals, they are trade union members.”
Non-persons, in other words.
Outside the conference hall the BBC was inviting delegates to cast a vote on whether New Labour is dead by plopping a plastic ball into a see-through ballot box.
Asked for his view, Neil Kinnock accused the Beeb of dumbing down politics. He didn’t really need to. Back inside, Anita was showing viewers how it really should be done, observing: “The message we are getting is that people are really confused [about the vote]. The man who got the most votes didn’t win.”
