Last week was a notable one for
Derby, my home town. First they dumped premiership Southampton out of the FA
cup on penalties in a thrilling FA cup replay. Then they acquired the
reputation of UK’s most Brexity place
when the audience on BBC’s Question Time, held in the city, made it plain that
they want the Brexit they voted for – a full one. Sunderland eat your heart
out.
Yet the post programme inquest has
featured allegations of impropriety and institutional racism against the BBC and host Fiona Bruce. Bruce
firmly, and incorrectly, contradicted
Diane Abbott’s contention that Labour and the Tories are neck and neck
in the opinion polls (the BBC have subsequently issued a correction). A Labour
Party activist present has also alleged
that during the pre-show warm up, Bruce insulted Abbott and wound up the crowd, inciting
abuse against her.
Diane Abbott was right about the
polls – it was a significant gaffe from the new presenter. Yet many of those
keen to sympathise with Abbott have seemed equally keen to engage in a few
insults and caricatures of their own at the expense of the Brexit cheering
audience.
The allegations against the BBC
originate from Derby Momentum activist Jyoti Wilkinson, whose account of events
has echoed around social media. Wilkinson writes
that the audience were selected for their xenophobic views (which seems
incredibly unlikely and has been firmly denied by the BBC, but nonetheless has
entered into the folklore of online conspiracy theorising). He claims
that Fiona Bruce’s warm up ‘had the
desired effect, and the carefully selected audience guffawed in delight as they
had now been given licence to air their bigoted views in public’. He states
that ‘audience members barracked and abused her, questioned her legitimacy and
jeered, empowered by the licence they felt they had been given by the BBC to do
so’ .
Wilkinson depicts the audience as
a braying mob led on by the rabble rousing former host of Antiques Roadshow. He
even claims
that the ‘… most reactionary members of the audience were identified [during
the warm up] so they could be returned to during the show’.
Who were these reactionaries,
hand picked by Auntie for their bigotry and antipathy to Abbott? In the main,
simply people who were wholly dissatisfied with most of what they heard from
the panel on Brexit. Angry and vociferous? Certainly. Racist? Neither Wilkinson
nor anyone else has produced evidence of racist comments.
That did not prevent leading
Labour backing commentator Paul Mason from asserting
in the aftermath that Question Time is ‘staging hatred’ and that it has becoming a ‘theatre of racist
cruelty’. For Anne Perkins in the Guardian, Question Time features
‘whooping mobs looking for confrontation’. Labour MP Chi Onwurah made the
remarkable statement
on her twitter account: ‘To be clear I'm not accusing Fiona Bruce or the BBC of
racism but thru their ignorance of Labour's actual position in the polls &
biased contradiction of Diane's veracity they created a fertile environment for
racist abuse’.
The Derby audience are portrayed
as a bigoted, racist mob, led on by an
institutionally racist public service broadcaster. Apparently all it
takes is a mistake over polling figures and a poor taste gag to send the Brexit
backing supposed xenophobes into an
abusive rage. There is not even an
attempt to differentiate between the few who may have been out of order
pre-show or too exuberant during it, and the very large majority who simply had
a strong opinion over Brexit and a desire to express it forcefully.
How does a belligerent and vocal
audience become transformed so readily into a xenophobic rabble in the
mind’s eye of Question Time’s critics? Ever since the referendum some Remain
campaigners who never accepted the result have taken every opportunity to
associated Brexit with xenophobia. So much so that they now interpret vociferous
backing for Brexit as de facto bigotry. So for example, Paul Mason recently described
Brexit to a US radio channel as ‘very focused’ on ‘xenophobia [and] white
privilege’. This sort of guilt by association has been common and constant from
figures on the Remain side of the debate since the morning of June 24th, 2016.
A large section of a public audience cheering for Brexit is, for people
immersed in this bubble, inexplicable in any terms other than ignorance and
bigotry.
Inevitably there have been
demands to tame Question Time or regulate who speaks and what is said. Mason
wants it rebid
and the Guardian’s Anne Perkins offers suggestions
as to how to take the edge off those she characterises as the ‘mob’.
What is so good about Question
Time is that it is one of very few opportunities people get to directly
question the politicians, pundits and experts . Yes, it’s not always pretty,
and politicians of all stripes get humiliated and booed. But whether you agree
or disagree with those cheering for a full Brexit, or if you sympathise with Diane Abbott's treatment, last week’s Question Time
was a stark reminder of the gulf between elites and very many ordinary people.
Brexit voting audience members are unlikely to get an apology from their
detractors, and don’t demand one. But anyone wanting to bridge that gulf needs
to resist the dehumanising caricatures aimed only at delegitimising the Brexit
vote and avoiding the question of democracy it starkly poses.
