To think BBC news is lost to us now - bloody Farage on this morning

[pinotnow]

Why is he being platformed yet again to repeat the surely libellous and undoubtedly inflammatory language about KS and JP spouting from Elon Musk. Saying it's free speech?! Just irresponsible and vile. Even the way he refers to the PM as Starmer is just so rude and disrespectful.

I'm a massive supporter of the BBC and the licence fee but the news branch has clearly been infested with Tory supporters in high places and it's just not what it was now.

It's reputation and standing is being shredded😓.

Have you seen the language? Or are you just stirring the pot?

No, I haven't seen it, hence the question. What was the inflammatory stuff?

I'm not the OP... You asked me a question about why it would be considered rude for Nigel Farage to say something. And why that may be considered ruder than you or I saying it.

I did not say that using shorthand terms was polite. More my interpretation of what the OP was trying to convey.

Not really sure how/ why that is childish. Care to explain?

Yes, he's not the PM and I'm not on the TV as a political rival. It's convention to refer to the PM as such. I've noticed several journalists not doing so and calling him Starmer, like Farage does, and I find it rude. Like the hideous Boris phenomenon in reverse.

Yes I agree it would be politer to call him the PM. But I notice Farage referred to 'Trump' and not President Trump/President-Elect Trump/Donald Trump - so I wouldn't read too much into his use of 'Starmer'.

I agree Farage gets a disproportionate amount of coverage. Even when he wasn’t an MP and his party had no MPs he was never off the bloody telly.

@Hedgerow2 a reasonable point. It does seem to be his style.

Why wouldn’t they give Farage a platform? He’s a politician and lots of us want to hear what he has to say. The far left don’t get to dictate who can speak and who can’t (anymore)

Another liberal advocating for cancel culture. How very fascist.

Another thing to remember is that - believe it or not - the bbc is not the only place you can get news. If the bbc is just giving airtime to the people the pearl clutching, tea swigging ‘isnt Keir Starmer lovely, his father made tools’ crew than the youth will find other platforms and guess who is all over TikTok tight now

lets not tell the youth of today they are idiots for voting for him, watching him. Let’s understand why he appeals.

The thing is that apparently young people like Reform but it doesn’t seem like they vote for them yet. The demographic is older, white and ex Tory voters. Farage does very well on social media but this doesn’t immediately translate into votes.

Totally agree - I am appalled - he and Tice are everywhere. Tice was also on Sky news this morning just talking over Trevor Phillips.
It reminds me of Emily Maitlis' reference to false equivalence.
We would all hopefully support free speech but we should be hearing from all politicians. Why don't the Greens and other parties get equivalent airtime?
This feels less like free speech and more like propaganda.

Totally agree with this.

@Ablondiebutagoody - in a nutshell - He has called for Starmer and his safeguarding minister to be removed from power, for new elections to take place, and even for King Charles III to unilaterally dissolve parliament – something which hasn’t happened for nearly two centuries and would cause a constitutional crisis.
He went further with Jess Phillips & said she should be jailed.

Could the people bleating about "free speech" please reflect that we do not and have never had free speech in the UK, and nor, I suspect, would most of us want it? Incitement, offensive speech, hate speech and promotion of proscribed organisations are all prohibited. I would just like to see the law applied to Nigel Farage in the same way it would be to anyone else.

OP, Reform got 14.3% of the country's votes, and 5 seats. LibDems got fewer votes, 12.2%, but 72 seats. (And while we're at it, Labour got 411/63.2% of the seats on the back of just 33.7% of the votes.)

Our First Past The Post system, a relic from the days of there being only two parties (Tories and Whigs), is capable of delivering a distorted number of seats to the current number of parties.

So whilst in your terms, considering only the number of seats, the coverage of Farage may well be disproportionate - is it disproportionate for the party that is the third biggest in terms of overall voters?

I totally understand where you’re coming from, OP. His comments and those of his MPs following the horrendous incident in Southport were dangerous, irresponsible and inflammatory. Their daily social media updates certainly continue in that same approach, whipping up hate and division. One of the Reform MPs (James McMurdock) was convicted of a violent and sustained assault of a woman - repeatedly kicking her; they’ve stood by him and the fact that he didn’t disclose the full details before the election, so let’s not be under any illusion about the values of Reform Ltd. I think it’s the ‘normalising’ of this that worries me and by appearing regularly on the BBC without ever really, truly being held to account, that’s exactly what happens.
The amount of media coverage in general that Reform receive over the Lib Dem’s, Green Party, etc. is also part of this - not to mention GB News (which, according to a media monitoring study, was found to broadcast half of all UK stories on Muslims) and on which Reform MPs regularly feature; also, they’re certainly popular with Elon Musk owner of X, so they - for sure - have plenty of free speech platforms…some might say significantly more than most of the other minority parties.

Judging by the way it's going, I think we're all going to be seeing a lot more of Farage ....

At least he vaguely answered the questions, which made a nice change.

Thanks. They're slightly mad views in my opinion but I don't see a problem with him expressing them. People can then agree or not. I wouldn't say that they are inflammatory and need to be cancelled.

Completely agree.

The BBC has artificially boosted the far right nonsense by giving him a free seat on question time and other outlets whenever he wants it.

I could have had a mangy goat elected with the air time this minority twit has been given.

The BBC is obsessed y balance. That does mean equal and opposite air time. Climate change is a great example: every proper scientist and scientific outlet agrees human carbon emissions is driving climate change, but the BBC finds the one lunatic cretin cosplaying as a scientist to give equal air time too.

Same with the far right mob.

Luckily there are many new forms of media online with thought provoking intelligent arguments and think pieces that aren't governed by sound bites.

I like that this is making people question our FPTP political system.

We don't seem to have anything equivalent to the US Brandenburg test in the UK.

The Brandenburg test (aka the imminent lawless action test) is a Supreme Court standard for the interpretation of what constitutes inflammatory speech and whether it's punishable. Speech is not protected by the First Amendment if it is imminently and feasibly intended to incite a violation of the law.

The Brandenburg test was established in the 1969 Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio. The test contributes to the the current understanding of free speech in the US.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

We may need to consider something comparable in the UK although I've no idea what it would look like.

Explorations of Brandenburg test viz Trump's Jan 6th involvement and findings.

https://www.crimlawpractitioner.org/post/we-fight-like-hell-applying-brandenburg-to-trump-s-speech-surrounding-the-u-s-capitol-siege

www.cato.org/commentary/trumps-disqualification-case-could-set-dangerous-first-amendment-precedent

I don’t see the leaders of the Green Party or even the Lib Dems being given anywhere near the same amount of airtime. Reform are in parliamentary terms, an irrelevance. But he is allowed and enabled to have a significant voice on mainstream media. Don’t come crying in 12 years time when we are all zero hour contract slaves to Musk and Farage is photographed down the pub with a cig in hand

They aren't being heard because they aren't stepping forward to talk. Simple as that

So that noone is under any illusion about what he's bringing to the table.

People are incredibly dense when it comes to politicians and political parties, which is why there are always howls of "they lied" and shouts about a lack of transparency.

You really think this is why Farage has had an outsized platform for over a decade…?