Peter Oborne

Peter Alan Oborne
Personal details
Born	(1957-07-11) 11 July 1957 Poole, Dorset, England, UK
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 is a Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph columnist, author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class, and, with Frances Weaver, the pamphlet Guilty Men.

Oborne is known for his acerbic commentary on the hypocrisy and apparent mendacity of contemporary politicians.

Career

Oborne was educated at Sherborne School and read history at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating with 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 (whose selection for England to tour South Africa in 1968 caused that country's apartheid regime to cancel the tour). Oborne 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 Zimbabwe, entitled A moral duty to act there.

As a television journalist Oborne 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, that examined how major political parties in Britain allegedly pursue an agenda designed to appeal only to a narrow band of floating voters expected to play a decisive role in the UK General Elections of 2005. In May 2007 Oborne presented a Dispatches programme on Channel 4 called Gordon Brown: Fit for Office?

In June 2005 Oborne wrote an article for London's Evening Standard entitled "Why the US is now our great enemy". In the article Oborne argued that, although he and his generation were brought up to love the US, the country nevertheless represented the greatest threat to world civilisation, in particular as a result of its stance on global warming.

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.

In July 2008, Oborne presented another Dispatches programme made for 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 Independent and prompted heated debate in the following weeks.

In 2009 Oborne contributed to Charlie Brooker's Newswipe on BBC Four. Most of a segment, which discussed cross-party collusion and corruption, had to be dropped owing to its potentially libellous content. Oborne was on the Orwell Prize's Journalism shortlist for 2009.

Again in collaboration with James Jones, Oborne wrote the pamphlet, "The Pro-Israel Lobby In Britain", which outlined the influence allegedly enjoyed by pro-Israeli media and politics lobbyists in the United Kingdom. The article asserted 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 legal, their funding is often untraceable, their operations are non-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." On this issue, Oborne wrote and presented an edition of Dispatches: "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby". In December 2012, he argued that the Conservative's unwillingness to criticise the Israel government threatens the prospects for a permanent peace in the region.

In collaboration with Conservative Member of Parliament 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 pamphlet attempted to show how "the Act is not a charter for socialism but contains the most basic rights from 900 years of British history".

In September 2011, Oborne and Frances Weaver co-authored the pamphlet "Guilty Men" for the Centre for Policy Studies. The report sought to identify the politicians, institutions and commentators who the authors felt had tried to take Britain into the European Single Currency and claimed to expose the "often unscrupulous and vicious personal attacks" carried out by supporters of the Euro. Oborne in particular identified William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Owen as three voices of opposition to early Euro entry that suffered such personal attacks.

Oborne was lambasted for his frank public comments in the 28 September 2011 edition of the BBC programme Newsnight. In the debate about the crisis of sovereign debt in the Eurozone, he referred on several occasions to Amadeu Altafaj Tardio as "that idiot in Brussels", which eventually resulted in Tardio's walking out of the studio. (Tardio, spokesman for European Union economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, was speaking from a studio in Brussels.) Oborne was "chided" by Newsnight anchor Jeremy Paxman for "gratuituous rudeness" after Paxman had himself asked for a response from, "Mr. Idiot in Brussels".

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, 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 legitimising claims of acting in 'good-faith' or within/according to 'The rules' 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 March 2009 Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture at the Center for Policy Studies was built upon this theme.

Oborne has strongly underlined the 'capturing' of 'independent' mainstream media institutions as being an integral part of the above implementation.

Iran

Written with David Morrison, Oborne's book A Dangerous Delusion: Why the Iranian Nuclear Threat is a Myth (2013) sought to dispel what the author's see as the common misconception of a malign intent behind Iranian's nuclear power programme. Times leader writer Oliver Kamm disputed the credibility of Morrison, labelling him a denier of the Srebrenica massacre. and took them to task in a subsequent article for asserting that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was "one of the greatest theologians of all time" whose "teaching contained insights which went far deeper than anything the rationalists and materialists of the United States could imagine."

Oborne, responding to his critics in an article for \The Spectator complained of the "scale and (in some cases) virulence that I have never encountered before". He rejected Kamm's claims about Morrison. He wrote that "not one of our critics have even tried to deal with the central, factual points of our short book: that Iran isn’t in possession of nuclear weapons and isn’t building them".

Awards and honors

• 2004 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, Basil D’Oliveira
• 2005 British Sports Book Awards (Best Biography), Basil D’Oliveira

Personal life

Oborne describes himself as a "regular Anglican churchgoer", and his wife, Martine, is Vicar at St. Michael's Sutton Court in Chiswick.

Works

• Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class. Aurum, 1999. ISBN 978-1-85410-647-6
• A moral duty to act there. Centre for Policy Studies, 2003. ISBN 978-1-903219-51-5
• The Rise of Political Lying. Free Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7432-7560-6
• Basil D'Oliveira: Cricket and Conspiracy: The Untold Story. Time Warner, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7515-3488-7
• The Triumph of the Political Class. Simon and Schuster, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7432-9527-7

See also

• Politico-media complex (PMC)

External links

• Oborne's column, Daily Telegraph
• Shepherd, R. "Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy", Wall Street Journal, November 2009