Burning Issues

Ah, Nick Hurd.

Eton and the Bullingdon Club. Son of Douglas Hurd. Son-in-law of Michael Ancram. So, where did he get that accent?

Oh, and he was one of at least 71 landlord Conservative MPs who voted against an amendment to require that rental properties be "fit for human habitation".

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a landlord. But there sure as hell is with this.

The Left should have moved into housing years ago. As with education, why do we waste our energy on polishing the jewels in the crown of the municipal Labour Right?

Something very similar applies to broadcasting. We do we waste our energy on polishing the jewel in the crown of the metropolitan Liberal Establishment?

Not that we do, of course. As with the EU, we saw, and we vociferously articulated, the problem with the BBC long before anyone else did.

But no one listens until the Tories say something. That was why no one listened to Pilgrim Tucker and the Grenfell Action Group.

Well, they are going to have to listen now.

The Left should have moved into broadcasting years ago.

It needs to bypass the metropolitan Liberal Establishment in order to make the alliances necessary to ensure a voice in the new structures of Sky and of the Channel Four Television Corporation.

(Rupert Murdoch already owns talkRADIO, to which The Mother of All Talk Shows will return at seven o'clock tomorrow evening. I for one will see anything special about the BBC when it broadcasts anything like that, or like Sputnik, or like Going Underground.)

The Left should have moved into broadcasting years ago.

It needs to bypass the municipal Labour Right in order to make the alliances necessary to ensure a voice in the structures of the Academies programme.

It also needs to continue to cultivate ties to the public schools, which host its leading figures on a very regular basis, in the starkest possible contrast to the state sector.

And the Left should have moved into housing years ago.

Over, if I may, to Pilgrim Tucker and the Grenfell Action Group.