Peter Oborne

Peter Alan Oborne
Personal details
Born	(1957-07-11) 11 July 1957
Nationality	British
Residence	United Kingdom
Alma mater	Cambridge University (Christ's College)
Profession	Journalist

Peter Oborne (born 11 July 1957) is a British journalist and political commentator. He was educated at Sherborne and Cambridge. A Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph columnist and author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class, he is particularly known for acerbic commentary on the hypocrisy and apparent mendacity of contemporary politicians. Oborne describes himself as a "a regular Anglican churchgoer."

Career

Oborne read history at Christ's College, Cambridge, taking a BA degree in 1978.

He is the author of a highly-critical biography of Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell and, in a different vein and contrast, a generous biography of the cricketer Basil D'Oliveira (for which he won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2004) whose selection for England to tour South Africa in 1968 caused that country's apartheid regime to cancel the tour. He is also a vocal critic of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe and author of a pamphlet, published by the Centre for Policy Studies about the situation in the country entitled A moral duty to act there.

As a television journalist he began by making three polemical documentaries with filmmaker Paul Yule - "Mugabe's Secret Famine" (2003), "Afghanistan - Here's One We Invaded Earlier" (2004), and "Not Cricket - The Basil D'Oliveira Conspiracy" (2004). In April 2005 he presented the Channel 4 programme in the Election Unspun series, Why Politicians Can't Tell The Truth, examining how the major political parties in Britain allegedly pursue an agenda designed to appeal only to a narrow band of floating voters expected to be decisive in the UK General Elections of 2005. In May 2007 he presented a Dispatches programme on Channel 4 called Gordon Brown: Fit for Office?

On Monday 20 June 2005 he wrote an article for London's Evening Standard with the title "Why the US is now our great enemy". In this article he argues how, although he and his generation were brought up to love the US, today they are the greatest threat to world civilisation. Global warming is the hinge point he describes around which this ally has turned into 'the biggest threat'.

In April 2006, it was announced that Oborne was taking up a new position at the Daily Mail as a political columnist, while retaining his connection with The Spectator as a contributing editor. Fraser Nelson of The Scotsman replaced Oborne as the Spectator's political editor.

On Monday 7 July 2008, Oborne presented a Dispatches programme on Channel 4 called It Shouldn't Happen to a Muslim. In this film and the accompanying leaflet Muslims Under Siege co-written with television journalist James Jones, it was argued that the demonisation of Muslims has become widespread in British media and politics. The pamphlet was serialised in the The Independent and prompted heated debate in the following weeks.

In February 2009, Oborne renewed his attack on MPs for alleged abuses of the 'additional costs allowance' (ACA).

Oborne's extensive contacts on the right of British politics mean he is now generally regarded as one of the foremost conservative commentators in the country. He is regularly lampooned in the satirical magazine Private Eye as 'Peter O'Bore'.

In 2009 he also contributed to Charlie Brooker's Newswipe on BBC Four. Most of a segment, discussing cross-party collusion and corruption, had to be removed due to its potentially libellous nature. Peter Oborne was on the Orwell Prize's Journalism shortlist for 2009.

Again in collaboration with James Jones, Oborne penned the pamphlet, THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY IN BRITAIN, which outlined the influence enjoyed by pro-Israeli lobbyists on media and politics in the United Kingdom. The article asserts that while the lobbying efforts of groups such as Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), Labour Friends of Israel, and the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) are not illegal, their funding is untraceable, their operations are not transparent, and media seldom declare the influence of junkets arranged by these pro-Israeli entities on the tenor of their writing. Oborne and Jones conclude that changes are needed "because politics in a democracy should never take place behind closed doors. It should be out in the open and there for all to see."

In collaboration with Conservative Member of Parliament for Hereford & South Herefordshire Jesse Norman, Oborne produced the pamphlet Churchill's Legacy - the Conservative case for the Human Rights Act in the summer of 2009. Published by Liberty, the book shows how 'the Act is not a charter for socialism but contains the most basic rights from 900 years of British history.'

Postmodernism

Oborne has argued that much of late 20th/early 21st century disenchantment with politics is due to a postmodern design of political agendas and programmes with subsequent implementation that denies the existence of an 'independent reality'. That is, that there is something that is called truth. Truth gives way to (mere) credibility. Commensurate with the evaporation of truth is the condensation of narrative as a setting for events. This worldview is then put to use in legitimating claims of acting in 'good-faith' or within/according to 'The rules' (said 'rules,' of necessity, formulated, accidentally or otherwise, to admit more than one interpretation) when such actions are confronted by moral challenge.

He cited New Labour as a 'front-wave' with the architects of this 'new reality' such as Peter Mandelson. (Oborne's 4 March 2009 Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture at the Center for Policy Studies was built upon this theme).

He has underlined, strongly, the 'capturing' of the 'independent' institutions of mainstream media (MSM) in the implementation.

Criticism

He is often dismissed as sensationalising topics in his articles.

Works

• Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class. Aurum, 1999. ISBN 978-1854106476
• A moral duty to act there. Centre for Policy Studies, 2003. ISBN 978-1903219515
• The Rise of Political Lying. Free Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0743275606
• Basil D'Oliviera: Cricket and Conspiracy : the Untold Story. Time Warner, 2005. ISBN 978-0751534887
• The Triumph of the Political Class. Simon and Schuster, 2007. ISBN 978-0743295277

See also

• Politico-media complex (PMC)

External links

• Oborne's Daily Telegraph column

Criticism

• Charlie Whelan. Poison Pen New Statesman. October 1999
• Shepherd, R. Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy [1] Wall Street Journal November 2009