Editor’s Note: Tim Walker wrote an article arguing that ‘Journalists Must Take Responsibility For The Mess We Are In‘. In that article, Tim Walker criticised a number of journalists. As a fair and balanced publication that vehemently believes in the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of expression, we are dedicating this space to Peter Oborne’s reply.
I have just read Tim Walker’s article entitled ‘Journalists Must Take Responsibility For The Mess We Are In‘ on your website.
I enthusiastically endorse Tim’s sentiment that those who backed Boris Johnson to become Prime Minister are accountable for what they did and wrote.
But Tim Walker is wrong when he says I backed Johnson. He is even more wrong when he says that when “this unscrupulous politician could still have been held in check” I “was churning out remunerative pieces for the Daily Mail praising his “good friend.’
There is an emerging form of journalism where writers pick fights with other journalists by sensationalising and distorting what colleagues have written in an attempt to pick a fight. Surely the purpose of journalism is to help readers understand issues. Distortion and deceit do not help a healthy public discourse.
You have run an unbalanced and selective piece by Tim Walker which makes a mockery of the truth in an attempt to make out that I was a partisan of Boris Johnson who helped him become prime minister in “remunerative pieces for the Daily Mail.”
The exact opposite is the case.
In my Mail columns I first supported Mrs May and her Brexit deal (heavily criticised by Johnson and his allies) right up to the end, up to and arguably beyond the point of ridicule.
When May resigned and the leadership contest started, I supported Rory Stewart in the first-round, and attacked Boris Johnson saying, ‘I fear he might split the Tory Party and perhaps also destroy the UK’.
After Rory Stewart fell out of the contest, I supported Jeremy Hunt saying that he has a ‘far more impressive record as a Government minister than does Johnson, and that I believe he could make an outstanding Prime Minister’.
When Johnson did go on to win the leadership campaign, I wrote a series of articles against him exposing his lies and explaining why I did not believe he did not deserve to win the 2019 General Election.
Tim Walker nevertheless writes: ‘Peter Oborne is now a vociferous critic of Boris Johnson, but, when it mattered and this unscrupulous politician could still have been held in check, he was churning out remunerative pieces for the Daily Mail praising his “Good friend”‘ – and goes on to state that I ‘drooled’ over his win.
Tim Walker is relying on a part of one piece I wrote for the Daily Mail, on 24th July 2019, just after Johnson had won the Tory leadership.
He entirely fails to mention that in the same article I attacked Johnson for his lack of integrity, the company he keeps, his handling of the situation in Yemen and his use of racist language. I stated that he was a ‘poor foreign sectary’, but that ‘I’d never have voted for Boris had I been part of the Tory membership’.He also ignored the fact that I set up a website ahead of the 2019 election, at the cost of great personal time and expense, exposing Johnson’s lies during the election campaign. It can be found here: https://boris-johnson-lies.com
I also wrote an article in October 2019 for Open Democracy exposing the complicity between Boris Johnson’s communications people and lobby journalists. The kind of lazy complicity Tim now accuses me of. That article cost me a great deal in terms of personal friendships which have still not been repaired.
In an interview with Nick Ferrari before that election I was cut off live on air for saying that Johnson was unfit for public office.
And plenty of other articles besides.
I remember Tim Walker with respect as a senior colleague at the Daily Telegraph a decade ago. While he is wrong to say I backed Johnson, he is completely right to say that the British press bear a heavy culpability for the election of Boris Johnson as prime minister. This is an argument I will be making with great force in my forthcoming book, The Assault on Truth: The Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism, to be published by Simon & Schuster on February 4th.
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Peter Oborne is a journalist. Twitter: @OborneTweets
