Gated

“Speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy and giving voice to those on the decent, commonsense, middle ground who find themselves marginalized by the gatekeepers of public discourse. That’s the mission of my new venture.”

I have in fact bought three of the publications of Melanie Phillips Electric Media: Phillips's autobiography, what looked to be Frederic Raphael's tour de force (it was slightly disappointing, as it turned out), and Douglas Murray's Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady, the publication of which had tastefully been brought forward in view of the Woolwich murder, although it is still an entertaining enough, if rather light, book.

Of the six authors already published, four, two thirds of the total, have Wikipedia entries, and I am rather surprised that the other two do not. I have yet to check, but I strongly suspect that all six have Who's Who entries. All four forthcoming authors have the former, and the three of them who are British doubtless also have the latter.

Phillips herself has a column in the second-largest circulation newspaper in Britain, and thus on its website, which is the most visited news site in the world. She appears regularly on The Moral Maze, which has considerable influence, and fairly often on Question Time, which has a huge audience for a political programme, easily the largest in the country.

Neither she nor any of those whom she is also publishing would have had the slightest trouble in finding a publisher if this venture did not exist. They are all doing it this way to make a point; to make it appear that they are "marginalized by the gatekeepers of public discourse". In more than one case, that is rather disappointing. In every case, though, these are "the gatekeepers of public discourse".

Making it all the odder that nothing has appeared since Murray's contribution, in May or June of last year. The launch of this venture attracted very considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic. What has gone wrong?