In the noisy populism routinely distorting our public debate, there is always plenty of talk about the shadowy “establishment” and that tedious cliché, the unaccountable “Westminster elite”. So it’s worth noting, before our gnat-like collective attention moves on, just how many direct hits this supposed citadel has sustained in the past few days.
There’s Ukip’s second byelection win at Rochester, of course, and Emily Thornberry’s helpful flag tweet on polling day. Both were useful to Nigel Farage, the public school-educated, tax-efficient ex-City trader turned EU employee who claims to speak for middle England. Like Rupert Murdoch, another child of privilege whose fortune rests on the bank of mum and dad, he has craftily changed sides to lead the populist crowd.
On Thursday, Andrew Mitchell lost his libel case. As I wrote back when “Plebgate” broke in the Sun in 2012, Mitchell can be a cocky fellow and the coppers’ dodgy trade union, the Police Federation, was in industrial dispute with the reformist Theresa May: both were probably wrong.
As level-headed retired PC Ian Richardson, one of the officers who witnessed the fateful exchange at the Downing Street gates, said on Radio 4’s Today programme, this was a trivial incident blown out of all proportion by the media, badly handled by the Metropolitian police as well as the federation and politicians. Praised by Mr Justice Mitting for his testimony, Richardson was gently critical of the force he served and even managed to feel sorry for the fallen cabinet minister and foolish colleagues who cooked up a yarn and were punished.
Good for Richardson, an old-fashioned copper of the decent kind: there are still plenty of them. Few others come out of the affair well. Mitchell’s persistent rudeness to police and security staff around Westminster – lovingly detailed by the Daily Mail on Friday – reflects badly on him. It is not how people in authority should treat subordinates doing a gruelling job. But, as we so often see, character flaws can overwhelm talent: Mitchell had been a good development minister.
The so-called establishment took another kicking this week when the Sun published the recorded exchanges between ex-cabinet minister David Mellor and a taxi driver whose job he was trying to do for him – shades of Andrew Mitchell you might say.
In the “good old days” the word of a cabinet minister, past or present – especially a Tory one – would probably have been taken against that of a London cabbie or bobby by most judges or magistrates. Many a miscarriage of justice doubtless occurred as a result. So the ability of a phone camera to capture and publicise such abuses is progress.
But the crucial point in the Mitchell case seems to have been that Mitting decided the cabinet minister was less reliable than PC Toby Rowland who was counter-suing him. Wow! That is quite a moment.
Don’t go away yet. I haven’t quite finished.
On Wednesday, Clodagh Hartley, the former Sun political correspondent, was acquitted of making unlawful payments to a Whitehall official for government secrets, the official having already pleaded guilty to receiving £17,475. I’m glad she was cleared: why should Hartley (whom I know slightly) take the fall for the boss class at the Sun and News of the World, who created, funded and sanctioned dodgy chequebook journalism as well as hacking on a grand scale?
I was not in court at the Old Bailey and unless you were you probably do not understand why the judge and jury did as they did. Even the best newspaper reports – such as Lisa O’Carroll’s account – cannot convey all the nuances. Hartley’s lawyers argued that the payments were not a secret and that she had acted in the public interest, always an important defence in journalism. Roy Greenslade, who was a tabloid editor before he was a professor of journalism, agreed.
I’m not so gung-ho as Roy or so convinced by the defence line. But that’s not the point here. A society where judges and juries sometimes take the side of ordinary people – cabbies, coppers, reporters – and the rich or powerful can come a cropper is not one controlled by mystery and unaccountable elites who despise the rest of us. Some elitists do and several of them have been caught out this week, though remember the court testimony: the populist Sun execs are very rude about its readers in private and allegedly bullied Hartley.
Untrammelled corporate power in many forms is a threat to the good society and constantly needs to be challenged. The same goes for state power. But the traffic is not all one way and beware populists, especially powerful ones, who try to persuade you otherwise.
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