The BBC’s ‘election worm’. Screengrab.
I’m one of over five million Britons living abroad, and will cast my postal vote from Athens. Like so many ‘expats’ - immigrants by another name - I have become far more dependent on the BBC than I was when living in London. My tendency to turn to the state broadcaster as the ‘voice of the nation’ disturbs me already, yet it is even more peculiar when the BBC’s own election coverage is so entirely obsessed with representing the opinions of the ever-mythical ‘British public’.
In no election during my lifetime has it been more advantageous for the politicians of the main parties to avoid the real issues at hand: the coming cuts, the disastrous possibility of Brexit, the need to rebalance our Union and political system – these are the core issues so skillfully drowned in the Great Game Show of psephology. The BBC has a remit not to follow suit, yet it is flooding its channels with this pulp. Instead of developing my thinking as a voter, I am repeatedly told what I’m – apparently – thinking.
