James Delingpole
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Rutland trained the first Japanese carrier pilots in the art of taking off and landing from a flight deck (at the time, British intelligence refused to believe Jap pilots could ever be a threat because they lacked the right spirit); later he moved to Hawaii where he provided the Japs with counter-intelligence information in the run up to Pearl Harbor. Sempill, meanwhile, having advised on the creation of Japan’s carrier fleet — for which he received the Order of the Rising Sun — went on to feed classified information to Japan’s military attaché in London. Even during the war, three days after Pearl Harbor, he was discovered by police on the phone to the Japanese embassy, surrounded by files he had taken from his job at the Admiralty.
Neither man was prosecuted, which the programme invited us to believe represented an Establishment cover-up. Actually, though, as was clear when the story broke ten years ago (when the intelligence files were declassified), it was largely a question of pragmatism. If Sempill were prosecuted, the head of the Security Service, Sir Vernon Kell, ruled, it would jeopardise intelligence sources so Sempill was allowed, much as Anthony Blunt mostly was, to spend the rest of his days posing as a pillar of the Establishment.
Talking of weaselly betrayal, I doubt there is another organisation anywhere in the world — not the KGB, nor the IRA, nor al-Qa’eda — which has worked quite so hard, so consistently to undermine Britain’s interests during the past few decades as the BBC. Most devastating of all was its zealous Europhilia which meant that any politician who dared venture even the mildest criticism of the Euro project was dismissed as a swivel-eyed loon, while anyone who praised it (Heseltine, etc.) was bigged up as a noble, visionary seer.
So how odd it was to see former chancellor Lord Lawson being given generous space on The Great Euro Crash (BBC1, last Thursday) to explain exactly why the euro was always going to fail: ‘You cannot have a monetary union that works without a fiscal union. You cannot have a fiscal union without, in effect, a single finance minister which means you have to have a full political union. You can only have a full political union if the people are prepared to go along with it. And the people quite clearly are not.’ And how even odder to hear the BBC’s lefty Europhile of an economics editor, Robert Peston, agreeing: ‘Monetary union was a political project in economic clothing.’ Er, well caught up there, finally, guys. Better late than never, eh?
Still, if this marks the beginning of a subtle new shift in the BBC’s political stance, I for one shall not be complaining. In fact, if it’s any help, maybe I can suggest a few possible new series for the BBC’s various directors of programming.
A New History of the British Empire — in which Andrew Roberts travels the world in the company of his most intimate friends (George W. Bush; the crowned heads of Europe; Burke’s Peerage, etc.) showing how much better it was when it was all coloured pink.
Liddle on Islam — a characteristically sensitive, treading-on-eggshells guide to the magnificence, charm and tolerance of the Religion of Peace by one of Britain’s foremost multiculturalists.
Question Time — with new host Nigel Farage.
BBC Horizon: Climate Change special — in which presenter James Delingpole quizzes various top climatologists on the truth about global warming using thumbscrews, the rack, and genital electrodes.
The Vanishing Earth — ten of the world’s most remote, fragile habitats, explored, via 4 x 4, battle tank and attack helicopter, by Jeremy Clarkson.
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