‘This should end Ben Habib’s career. It won’t. But in any rational universe it would’
Deputy leader of Reform UK has suggested that migrants should be left to drown in the Channel by the UK in a shocking exchange that has caused widespread outrage.
Ben Habib made the disturbing comments in an interview with Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV when asked how his right-wing party would handle migrants coming to England on small boats.
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He told the presenter: “I said that we could, as an idea, provide them with another dinghy into which to climb and then go back to France. And if they choose to scupper that dinghy, then yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions.”
“Then you would leave them to drown?”, asked Hartley-Brewer.
Habib replied: “Absolutely, they cannot be infantilised to the point that we become a hostage to fortune.”
Ofcom warns breaches could result in ‘statutory sanctions’.
Media regulator Ofcom has issued a warning to broadcasters about using politicians as presenters, ahead of the general election.
The media regulator issued a statement in which it said it was putting ‘broadcasters on notice that they must maintain the highest editorial standards ahead of a General Election’ and that breaches could result in ‘statutory sanctions’.
It comes after Ofcom found GB News in breach of broadcasting rules when three Conservative MPs acted as newsreaders across five different episodes of its programmes.
Ofcom found that two episodes of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation, two episodes of Friday Morning with Esther and Phil, and one episode of Saturday Morning with Esther and Phil, broadcast during May and June 2023 had broken impartiality rules. These episodes broke the part of the Ofcom code that says, “News, in whatever form, must be… presented with due impartiality” and “No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified.”
GB News has begun a round of redundancy, seeking to cut 40 roles, amid an operating loss of £42.4m.
Chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos announced the redundancy plans to staff last week, with Press Gazette reporting: “The business is currently appealing for staff open to taking voluntary redundancy to come forward, offering up to two months’ salary and possible payment in lieu of notice as enticement.
“One staffer at the channel told Press Gazette there was “a real ‘last days of Saigon’ vibe in the office right now”.
The right-wing channel announced last month that its operating losses had grown 38% to £42.4m in the year to May 2023.
Right-wing Channel GB News, which has made a mockery of broadcasting rules, has had over 20,000 complaints made about it since its launch in 2021.
The shocking figures were revealed after a freedom of information request from the i, which found that in 2021, the year GB News was launched, Ofcom received 3,481 complaints – an average of around 290 complaints a month.
Between 2021 and until 12 March 2024, GB News has had a total of 21,671 complaints made against it.
The paper reports that overall, ‘complaints about news broadcasters have soared almost seven-fold since the launch of GB News and Talk TV’.
GB news is no stranger to controversy and has had a number of high profile incidents which have resulted in complaints being made against the channel, having platformed bigoted and racist views and conspiracy theories.
From obscuring the West’s role in starving Gaza to sensationalised accounts of mass rape by Hamas, journalists are playing the role of propagandists, not reporters.
Israel has reduced Gaza to ruins. (Photo: UNRWA)
The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.
Liberal democracy is not what it seems.
It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.
But how to keep the faith when the world’s leading liberal democracies – invariably referred to as “the West” – are complicit in the crime of crimes: genocide?
Not just law-breaking or a misdemeanour, but the extermination of a people. And not just quickly, before the mind has time to absorb and weigh the gravity and extent of the crime, but in slow motion, day after day, week after week, month after month.
What kind of system of values can allow for five months the crushing of children under rubble, the detonation of fragile bodies, the wasting away of babies, while still claiming to be humanitarian, tolerant, peace-seeking?
And not just allow all this, but actively assist in it. Supply the bombs that blow those children to pieces or bring houses down on them, and sever ties to the only aid agency that can hope to keep them alive.
The answer, it seems, is the West’s system of values.
The mask has not just slipped, it has been ripped off. What lies beneath is ugly indeed.
