The Richard Sharp Scandal Exposes How the Actual Elite Works
Despite attempts to divert attention towards a liberal "new elite", the scandal of the BBC Chairman and a secret loan to the Prime Minister shows where power really lies
There can be no better demonstration of how power actually works in the UK than the Richard Sharp scandal.
The BBC Chairman finally resigned yesterday after months of revelations about his facilitation of a massive secret loan for Boris Johnson, plus his funding of groups set up to undermine the very organisation the Government had appointed him to.
Sharp, who donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party, was a former mentor and advisor to the current Prime Minister and helped arrange the loan for Johnson shortly before being appointed to his role at The BBC.
The source of the £800,000 loan to Johnson, which a distant relation of the former Prime Minister acted as a guarantor for, is still not publicly known.
Let’s just let that one sink in for a second. Until relatively recently, our Prime Minister was being secretly funded by a mysterious benefactor, with the undisclosed help of the chairman of our supposedly independent national broadcaster. And even now there is almost no real demand, or mechanism, for us to find out who that benefactor is.
Sharp’s appointment, which had been heavily briefed in advance to the press in an apparent attempt to discourage more qualified candidates from coming forward, was as straightforward a case of cronyism and corruption of standards in public life as it is possible to imagine. And it was all allowed to happen with the apparent acquiescence of the supposedly independent head of the civil service, Simon Case.
To put it simply, it stinks. And yet to watch Sharp’s resignation statement yesterday you might assume that absolutely nothing wrong had occurred and that he was merely stepping aside out of an act of sheer benevolence to the public realm.
Sharp’s resignation also barely registers in today’s major newspapers, with the Telegraph and Express only featuring it on their front pages as part of yet another opportunity to have a pop at Gary Lineker.
The entire saga is as clear a demonstration of the actual reality of the British establishment in modern Britain as it is possible to imagine.
For all the recent attempts by one Potemkin academic to divert attention to a “new elite” of media liberals, actual power in the UK remains in the hands of a ludicrously small group of closely-connected and socially uniform conservatives.
Whether it’s the media, politics, or big business, real power in the UK remains almost entirely closed off to all but a small group of very wealthy men with a vanishingly narrow set of financial and political interests.
And as the endless coverage of Gary Lineker demonstrates, for all the talk of the supposed power wielded by a new generation of “woke” liberals, the reality is that anyone with any real profile daring to actually speak out against the current establishment will meet an absolute firestorm of resistance from the people with actual power in the UK.
And if that applies to someone with the profile, following, and wealth of someone like Lineker, then it applies a thousands times over to someone with none of those things.
Whether you’re an environmental protester arrested for the ludicrous new crime of “slow walking”, or a nurse prohibited by the courts from going on strike for a living wage, the liberty of ‘free speech’, so lauded by parts of the British press is simply something that in practice doesn’t apply to you.
Meanwhile the tiny group of people with actual power in the UK, continue to speak and act almost entirely as they please, while drifting from one high-pay, high-power position to another, with only the minor irritation of the occasional unavoidable public scandal interrupting their continued ascent.
It's sickening. For ages now we've been saying that the rulers clique are laughing at us and it just gets truer every day that passes. They no longer try to hide it, why should they put that amount of effort in when we are powerless. If we had power of any kind, we would not have had Patel as Home Sec. and we would not have Braverman as Home Sec. now. Kwarteng and his ridiculous ideas and Truss and her frankly insane ideas, would never have been a thing. Yet here we are, told by the Bank of England to accept that we are now poorer and just to get on with it.
Finally this corrupt appointment to the BBC, designed to wreck the BBC, has had to give up and go because if the focus remained on him there was more likelihood of Johnson picking up some of the brown smelly stuff as a result. It's all about protecting their own. This man will have another fabulously well paid job in the bag in a few weeks.
How is it even possible that a PM could not live on the PM's salary?! It shows a terrible lack of concern for the ordinary people if they can't trim their lifestyle to fit that sort of money given they have 2 free homes for the duration. All that fuss about the flat decoration!!! I just want to put these people in Stocks and throw rotten food at them for a few hours then transfer them to a prison cell and leave them there for a long time. I am approaching retirement age now, with no hope of a pension I could live on and therefore no chance of retiring despite some health issues that make working exhausting. I have a small business that was supposed to run on into our old age and provide a nice little income with employees taking the strain of the day to day heavy lifting. But Brexit killed that for me. Now it's barely hanging on and I have not been able to take an income for a few months. There are no longer any staff. I am in despair of the future. I used to have nothing but hope.
and Chris Mason "accidentally" reports inaccurate news re. Johnson's leadership bid, at a coincidentally crucial stage of proceedings... I was shouted down for calling that propaganda at the time! So grateful to have you and James on duty btw, consistently reassuring slices of sanity.