Startling self-awareness from George Monbiot here

Yes, yes, of course, George’s career is one of speaking truth to power etc. And yet:

The Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley “argued” that the media can’t be predominantly rightwing, because GB News says it has been “captured by the loony left”. The rightwinger Inaya Folarin Iman called the idea that billionaires influence the media they own a “grand conspiracy” and “false consciousness”. Such people are now so dominant that they no longer even have to make sense.

Power is the rock on which truth founders. It will always find willing enforcers: no one ever lost money by telling billionaires what they want to hear. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, is a single-issue lobby group, whose purpose is to assert the rights of capital.

All most comforting to a particular worldview no doubt. But we know of only the one media outlet that does, in fact, have a billion quid. Some might be worth that much. Some might be owned by people who are worth that much. But as we say, we know of only the one that actually has that much. That’s The Guardian, of course, through Scott Trust Ltd. You know, that money they piled up offshore from Autotrader, that second deal with the conversion of Scott Trust to Scott Trust Ltd to swerve the tax on that second £500 million deal. All protected from inheritance tax for a century and counting now through that use of the trust format. All, of course, firmly under the control of the self-perpetuating claque of the properly progressive in that very English haute bourgeoisie sense.

It is one of these fun little oddities of life that The Guardian is the only media organisation that does, in fact, have a billion in the vaults. If there’s a Scrooge McDuck it’s them.

Tim Worstall