Why has the prime minister weighed in on the content of a Gregg Wallace Instagram video? News that Keir Starmer’s spokesperson has taken the trouble to denounce the outer monologue of the beleaguered MasterChef host means – somewhat amazingly – that Gregg has no longer said the stupidest thing this week. This is, after all, supposed to be the week of Starmer’s big reset. Pivoting to rent-a-quote somehow does not feel like the solution that a malfunctioning UK requires.
Perhaps Starmer thought it would make him more popular? He is polling at a minus 33% approval rating with the British public, which I would have thought was actually rather lower than Gregg Wallace. Perhaps this is why the No 10 spokesperson felt – wrongly – that it might be the business of a prime minister to have a view on reporters’ questions about what he felt about someone blowing up their career on Insta at 7am on a Sunday. Reporters will always ask these questions, especially on slow news days, but experience shows that there is absolutely no expectation to answer them, let alone a requirement. Wallace has since declared he “wasn’t in a good head space” when he posted the video. One can’t help feeling the PM’s spokesperson should do the same.
Alas, the bad head space seems to be government-wide. The spokesperson also opted to reveal that the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has held talks with the BBC over the Wallace row. Oh dear. Even outriders are getting in on the act, with culture, media and sport committee member Rupa Huq taking to multiple airwaves on Monday with a series of interventions that primarily sparked fears over the calibre of members of the culture, media and sport committee. According to Huq, who seemed to be formulating HR prescriptions on the hoof, the BBC should consider pulling all pending episodes of MasterChef as they “could be massively triggering for the women involved”. Fascinating to hear someone who once described former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as “superficially” black now presenting herself as an expert in sensitivities. And yet, not quite fascinating enough to make it a festive essential.
We hear such a lot of talk about the supposed iniquities of television, where each year two or three high-profile men are defenestrated, having been found to have taken advantage of the famous power imbalances. And yet, can you think of a workplace that is also famously riven with power imbalances, yet which is far, far worse on the stats for this kind of thing? Can you think of a workplace where even in the year 2024, victims frequently still state that there is no point in complaining about misconduct?
I think you can. It is, of course, the Palace of Westminster. A workplace so bad it has genuinely been nicknamed Pestminster. The chief achievement of all those politicians scrambling to involve themselves in the latest mid-level telly row should be that they have reminded us how much more essential it is that Westminster – the actual seat of government – drags itself into even the 20th century in terms of dealing with complaints of harassment and abuse. The 21st century would be nice, but let’s face it … baby steps.
It’s not like this in telly. If you are a television executive to whom some problematic man reported, you then suffer the arguable absurdity of being hauled before a committee of MPs with absolutely giant planks protruding from their own eyes to discuss the mote in yours. Consider last year’s DCMS committee’s emergency sesh into the matter of Phillip Schofield, to which ITV executives were summoned despite the fact they’d already forced him out. The committee had only just installed a new chair, the previous one having had to “step back” while he was investigated by the Metropolitan police for sexual assault. Julian Knight was eventually not charged, but the Conservative party declined to readmit him after what were described as “further complaints”. What were these? We never found out from the party. Knight and his bosses couldn’t have been hauled before a televised Wrong ’Un MPs select committee. Mainly because one doesn’t exist. Though if it did, you’d think it would be the busiest one out there.
By the time we got to the end of the last parliament, a staggering 10 MPs had lost their seats because of their own behaviour, six of them for sexual misconduct allegations. At one given moment earlier in that period, something like 16 were suspended on suspicion of misbehaviour. There are only 650 of them! This is proportionally equivalent to about 200 people at ITV being probed, or about 800 people at the BBC. I think we’d be reading quite a lot about it if 800 people at the BBC were under investigation. I know we’d be having all manner of crisis interventions from Lisa Nandy and Keir Starmer.
And yet, we never hear the PM talk about the fact that it was only six years ago that parliament even agreed to put an independent complaints system in place. We don’t hear him talk about the fact that this new system is still embryonic and painfully slow. We never hear him explain why the parties’ own complaints procedures are still completely closed books to the outside world. Last year, it was revealed that a woman had spent three years waiting for the Labour party to investigate a groping and sexual harassment claim against a senior party aide. It was finally upheld, only for the man to be let off with a warning. You’d think all of these things, and many more like them, are more the concern of senior politicians than a cooking show. Perhaps the prime minister has a comment?
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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