Pravda's flasgship current affairs programme Newsnight felt the need to cover the imminent closure of steel works across the UK by India's Tata last night and so invited onto its show, commie journalist Paul Mason (ex Newsnight) and fat old Tory Ken Clarke. In the chair was the sneering chearleader of the metropolitan media liberal elite Kirsty Wark, a woman who insists that she earns less than £500,000 a year.
Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your taxpayer funded lifestyle.
Clarke wiped the floor with Mason, quite rightly pointing out that while pretending to be a new age thinker Mason merely trots out ideas discredited by the late 1960s. Does anyone in the real world really think that the Government should own "strategic" parts of the economy? Mason does and thus thinks Steel should be nationalised or given to the workers to be co-operatives? In Mason's world - and this is 1930s Communism not sixties socialism - The State can seize privately held assets to give to the workers.
But why would the workers want to own assets losing £1 million a day? Mason did not explain how that was going to pan out. He was gibbering by the end as Clarke walked all over him. For once the fat old Euro-loon brought a smile to my face.
But the most telling moment came early on as Clarke said that he was aware how important Steel was in some areas as he had driven past Port Talbot many times. So have I and as you head along the Motorway you cannot miss the steel works. But Wark sneered "you have driven past Port Talbot". She missed the point Clarke was making ( anyone can see how big Steel is in Port Talbot) suggesting with her sneer that he would never actually go visit a post industrial working class shit-hole like Port Talbot. He would just like to drive past.
It is the "all Tories are snobs who don't care about the workers" line that the BBC loves so much. From her media career - largely supported by the grateful taxpayer - Wark owns a flat in Central London, a Majorca holiday home (where she entertains Labour politicians) plus property in Scotland. She is minted. And you can bet that she spends bugger all time mixing with the workers, the proles. Kirsty mingles with the media and political elite (lefties only) at smart parties and in expensive Zone 1 restaurants. One suspects fat old Ken meets many more proles than Kirsty as he wanders around his constituency in the East Midlands.
The Wark sneer said everything. However much utter baloney Mason spouted and however often Clarke exposed his intellectual non-sequiturs, Wark was batting for her old comrade Mason all the way. It is after all the BBC and with Pravda there is only one form of truth.