GUardian and the BBC -- still no grovelling public apology!

The Graun reports fears from the BBC now their hate figure has done so well despite all their efforts:

some of its journalists privately fear that errors during the campaign may have hit public trust in the corporation.

which attracted a classic BBC reply from their CEO:

“In a frenetic campaign where we’ve produced hundreds of hours of output, of course we’ve made the odd mistake and we’ve held up our hands to them. Editors are making tough calls every minute of the day. But I don’t accept the view of those critics who jump on a handful of examples to suggest we’re somehow biased one way or the other.”

As usual, he has owned up to incompetence (silly mistakes in editing out laughter etc), seen these 'errors' as random, opted for the usual management technique of packing in behind expert staff (editors in this case), and pointed to criticism 'from both sides', thereby refusing to consider any patterns or evidence of them, any underlying, maybe even unconscious, ideological assumptions. It's not enough. I now think a full public grovelling apology is demanded by folk all over the country as well as the people Newsnight journalists meet (see below)

There was a new element which might be particularly bad news for Kuenssberg:

younger staff repeatedly and persistently raised concerns about the loosely phrased tweets of senior BBC journalists

Dinner parties in Islington seem to be a bit more tense, and as this is the source of most of their views of 'public' concerns, news might be drying up:

BBC journalists based in London, an area with strong Labour support, reported finding it harder now that their friendship groups were increasingly critical of the corporation’s output....One regional BBC reporter said they had noticed many more members of the public refusing to talk to him...[Another said] “It’s really tough working for the BBC at the moment. I have never known the fury to be so great....”

 Meanwhile,the Gru inquest continues:

The story of Boris Johnson’s landslide victory has been simplified into seven easy-to-understand charts by the Guardian’s data visual team. It paints a picture of how Brexit loomed large in voters’ minds as the Conservatives penetrated the Labour “red wall”...Labour insiders shed light on a lack of strategic focus, leadership confusion, and how Corbyn had all but given up by the final week of a bruising campaign.

Pity their journalists didn't read these easy-to-understand charts. Luckily, one of their predictions does seem to have worked:

[After the SNP triumph we are a] nation that remains divided

Elsewhere, there is still a conspiracy theory about the dark arts:

We didn’t need Russian bots to spread misinformation: real people retweeting false claims did enough damage

So working class Leavers read tweets? Even the GRaun can see through that, and the article itself contradicts its own punchy subheading, as is common:

we were on the lookout for what the academics call “computational propaganda”...But every time we found something odd, closer inspection would reveal that the best explanation was the wonderful diversity of human experience, or, more prosaically, older voters whose desire to engage in political activism outweighed their technical literacy....The internet wasn’t the place for smart campaigning. The Labour party put out slick video after slick video, outspent the Tories on Snapchat and Facebook, and handed Jeremy Corbyn’s Twitter account to someone who understands memes extremely well...For all the attention paid to Facebook adverts, it’s hard to conclude that, at the very least, they matter less than policies and personalities.

Even Chakraborrty at first seems to have fallen for the explanatory binary (sic) though -- Brexit or failed Labour leadership? No-one seems able to connect the two together -- that Corbyn's leadership was exposed by his failure to deal with the Labour MP wreckers who worked with weird Tories like Letwin to sabotage the Government. A GRaun piece elsewhere hints at it: 'The likes of Keir Starmer and Barry Gardiner would openly contradict each other’s position, while Corbyn showed little in the way of leadership'.

Chakraborrty adds a few redeeming sections that shows he still has promise:

[In the 'red wall' constituencies] Practically any institution that might incubate a working-class provincial political identity was bulldozed...Tony Blair and Gordon Brown pretended some new skills-based economy lay around the corner and parachuted their own chosen people into these safe seats... smooth-cheeked careerists [he cites David Miliband] ...New Labour patronised them into apathy...the “decline of class-based voting was driven by Labour’s shift to the political centre ground”.

And to ultra liberal petite bourgeois identity politics under Corby. He had to choose between traditional(ish) working class Labour leavers and npb millenial remainers  He was assured choosing the npb would increase the Remainer vote for him -- but warned that that was most likely in inner-city London seats that voted Labour anyway, and it was easier for Tories to capture the Northern Leave seats. He followed New Labour (and some New Left) orthodoxy that class-based politics had to be replaced by discourses about 'popular front' rainbow coalitions of identity warriors. Chakraborrty points out the consequences:

Any radicalism that fails to ask the really thorny questions isn’t radical at all. In Britain in 2019, those include: against rampant inequality and climate change, what’s the economy for? What do the public actually want from politics and economics?... providing advice to those whose benefits are being slashed, legal support to tenants under the cosh from their landlords, haggling with the utilities to provide cheaper and better deals. Add to that: teaching political and economic literacy to voters, not just activists, and consulting constituents on what issues Labour should be battling on....[not]...some GCSE marketing talk about finding new “narratives”

I am afraid even some (supporters of) Grenfell victims also need to learn about the real political priorities for voters. The GRu notes that:

After Grenfell, a Tory MP for Kensington is a bitter pill

[Gyimah's] campaign literature did not reference Grenfell or the long-term recovery plan, leading to strong criticism from residents. Instead, the campaign stuck to issues the Lib Dems thought would appeal to remain voters: Brexit, schools, the NHS. This was not so much an oversight as a catastrophic slap in the face for a community still working to rebuild. Gyimah himself repeated unfounded accusations about [sitting Labour MP] Dent-Coad’s role in the refurbishment at Grenfell, leading to an official complaint, and failed to understand the lived experience of the constituents he was trying to win over....A swing of 9% to the Lib Dems in this strongly remain borough gave Gyimah more than 9,000 votes, splitting the vote.