DAVOS SYNDROME: NIALL FERGUSON TWISTS & MARK MARDELL LIMBOS IN COMO

Yesterday on BBC Any Questions, David Dimbelby trotted out the BBC's next Funny Tory PM Hopeful. Not content with having given Boris Johnson a platform, and paying him, at every possible opportunity, the Beeb has now turned to Jacob Rees-Mogg, another Etonian with the shuffle and the stammer who as usual drew chuckles and smiles but no serious challenging from his host. Not even when he stated, with a cloud of persiflage, that the UK had no legal obligation to pay anything to the EU; an echo of Bojo's dare for them to whistle. I was stunned how even his political opponents simply let that one by; one doesn't expect Dimbels to do anything.

But it was funny later when one of the audience asked a question about having many children, clearly a light-hearted attempt to draw more humour from the new Tory clown. I would have liked one panelist to ask a hypothetical to the chair: what if Richard Dimbelby had had, say, eight sons? Would any of the current BBC news presenters actually have jobs?

Then I was listening to BBC's World This Weekend today, Mark Mardell hosting the show from the Ambrosetti Forum, a Davos-like conference sponsored by the major 'consulting' firm on Lake Como. They were concentrating on Michel Barnier saying he was 'warning', not blackmailing, the UK, rather than concentrating on his explanation that the Brits owe money they committed to in 2014 through 2020, and they needed to meet their obligations. Was Rees-Mogg listening? The current Brexit 'debate' is, like the issue and campaign itself, being conducted not for negotiation purposes with the EU, but for party political positioning within the UK, which is why it is doomed. And when it falls apart, as it surely will, the Brexshiteers will rachet up the bellicosity, wrap themselves in Union Jacks, and boast of battling for Britain against Johnny Foreigner.

But more worrying was the programme's last twenty minutes, a calculated symphony of far-right propaganda which segued cleanly from Geert Wilders cheering on the Brexshiteers, to Niall Ferguson (not a huge leap as segues go), who was given a huge chunk of time to proselytize for the far-right with his usual exercise in disingenuousness, to use a polite word.

Asked about Trump, Ferguson built up a clever comparison with John Kennedy. Kennedy, it turned out, was the one with the chaotic presidency who rushed to the brink of war. There were little twists and glib half-truths littered around as character assassination, none of which Mardell challenged, but the essence of the argument was this: Kennedy's mindless aggression nearly launched nuclear war on the planet. Trump, on the other hand, while he signals craziness (remember Kissinger's advice to Nixon, about acting crazy so the Commies won't dare do anything? Forget not that Ferguson is one of Kissinger's hagiographers) is not actually crazy, but in reality being well-served in the serious stuff by advisers like General Mad Dog Mattis and General McMaster. Thus we should watch what they do rather than what Trump says.

Now Ferguson presumably knows full well that during the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy had to fight like Ali against Liston to hold off the generals and admirals of the Joint Chiefs, led by Gen. Mad Dog Curtis LeMay, all of whom wanted to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviets. If he doesn't know he can read the transcripts, not only of their meetings with the Presidents, but a revealing transcript of their discussions among themselves. They uniformly excoriated Kennedy for his weakness.

As we know, Kennedy steered us away from the brink, and soon exiled LeMay to NATO where he couldn't cause more trouble. And as we remember, Ferguson is not an historian as much as a propagandist who cloaks his militant far-right world view in the trappings of twisted history. But what was even more spectacularly fraudulent was his conclusion: that he wished, in a way, Trump would be MORE like Kennedy, and send the carriers to Korea. Which made his entire false comparison of the two men meaningless, except as a flashy and hypocritical false equivalency.

Mark Mardell offered no recognition of this. He didn't question any of Ferguson's 'history' of JFK. He didn't notice the oxymoron. He didn't show any awareness of history or current events. He was in Como, lunching with the heavy hitters of world business and their well-paid acolytes, and became yet another victim of Davos Syndrome, a well-fed variation of Stockholm Syndrome which seems to afflict those fronting BBC shows from such resorts especially hard. The canteen at Broadcasting House offers little to match.