Media: the wages of prattle

By Richard North - June 22, 2026

It’s actually getting a bit tedious now – not that it wasn’t before. Since I last wrote on the Starmer soap opera, there have been very few developments of substance so, while the issue still dominates the headlines, the media is marking time by recycling old news.

What does seem to be firming up, though, is that Burnham is looking to a delayed transition with Starmer being allowed to stay in place until September, giving his successor time to make an orderly handover.

While Burnham is preparing policies and building a team to run the government (not the “country” as the Telegraph says – prime ministers do not run the country), Starmer can get on with polishing his “legacy”, cementing his moniker of “never here Keir” as he goes gadding around the world at the taxpayers’ expense.

Thus, what happens today will probably come as little surprise, with just about every possible angle already priced in by the cohorts of pundits. Yet, for all that, the non-news has driven most other issues off the front pages, while the scribblers prepare to do it all over again for Tuesday’s editions.

It is a truism that domestic politics always trump other subjects – and especially foreign affairs – but this obsession with the soap opera to the exclusion of almost all else amounts to a monomania which underlines how parochial this country has become.

Our media cannot even stay on track long enough to explore the undercurrents of British politics, where the Right seems to be gradually reshaping itself in a way that cannot help but have a profound effect on the outcome of the next general election – whenever that is.

Pete – rather to his own personal detriment – is following the trail and is writing of the influence of the so-called “ethnonats” on the Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party.

This rather reinforces my view that his party’s days are numbered. Whatever challenge to Reform they might have presented at Makerfield, the chances are that they will never again present anything like the same threat and are on their way to decline and eventual obscurity.

In many ways, this is a pity. Few readers here will be unaware of my antipathy for Farage and I would have welcomed a viable alternative to Reform. But I’ve never been terribly impressed with Lowe in his current role – he is not in any way a serious politician.

As an example of why he is never going to deliver, in the wake of his shoddy and ill-considered rape gang “inquiry, Lowe says he is planning to mount private prosecutions of the guilty parties who have so far evaded justice.

Yet Lowe should know – and if he doesn’t, he has no business playing at being a politician – that his proposal, apparently with the support of Elon Musk, is a sham.

The point here is that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has the legal power to take over any private prosecution and discontinue it. This absolute power is granted under Section 6(2) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, which allows the DPP – acting through the CPS – to intervene in a private criminal case at any stage of the proceedings.

The legality of using this power to stop a case is undisputed and was explicitly upheld by the UK Supreme Court in the landmark ruling R (Gujra) v CPS [2012].

Procedurally, the CPS will evaluate his private prosecution against the Full Code Test outlined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors. The DPP will take over and stop a private prosecution unless certain criteria are met.

Firstly, he will step in if there is no realistic prospect of conviction based on the available evidence. Then, if he considers that continuing the prosecution is not in the public interest, he can stop the proceedings.

Should the private case disrupt or harm another ongoing state investigation or prosecution, it can also be stopped. Finally, the DPP might judge that the prosecution is vexatious, malicious, or an abuse of the court process, in which case it would be discontinued.

It is a racing certainty that, the moment Lowe’s team attempted to target individuals, it would attract the attention of the CPS which would have the DPP stepping in to review the cases. Legally, the DPP holds all the cards. The legal reality of Section 6(2) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 means this strategy would face extreme institutional friction.

For any private prosecution to survive, it must meet the same evidentiary standards as a state prosecution. But Lowe’s “inquiry” is a political and investigative body, not a police force. If his team brings charges, the DPP will demand to see the underlying evidence.

If he determines the evidence does not establish a “realistic prospect of conviction”, he will take over the case and shut it down immediately to protect the justice system from weak or legally flawed trials.

One of the core grounds for a DPP takeover is if a private prosecution interferes with an ongoing state investigation. This is a massive hurdle in child sexual exploitation (CSE) cases. For instance, the National Crime Agency (NCA) is currently conducting a massive national review reviewing thousands of historic grooming gang files, under the banner Operation Beaconport.

Should Lowe attempt privately to prosecute individuals who are already under active investigation or review by the NCA or local police forces – which he can hardly avoid doing, given the breadth of these investigations – the CPS will almost certainly intervene and discontinue his actions to prevent him from compromising or “contaminating” complex, ongoing state operations.

Lowe has made great play of that fact that his target list includes not just direct perpetrators, but also the “enablers” – meaning police officers, social workers, and council officials who historically failed to act. Proving criminal misconduct in a public office or criminal negligence carries an exceptionally high legal threshold.

In any event, if the CPS views these specific prosecutions as politically motivated or legally unsustainable, they will step in under the “public interest” or “evidential” limbs of the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

While Lowe has raised nearly £800,000 to fund his inquiry, he will find that cash will not open any doors – notwithstanding that, in this business, £800,000 is pocket change and does not go very far. Even if Musk did contribute, a private prosecution cannot force a trial simply because the police have failed to act.

If his team has uncovered genuine, bulletproof new evidence, the most likely outcome is that the CPS would take over the case, but instead of discontinuing it, they would absorb it into a public state prosecution.

The most stringent test, though, relates to the quality of evidence. If the evidence does not meet the strict criminal standard, the DPP will be obliged to shut any prosecution down.

This leaves civil litigation (which Lowe has also threatened) as the only remaining legal route. And that, in itself, is expensive and far from straightforward. There would be a high probability of failure, for much the same reasons as hinder successful criminal action.

Anybody with an astute political brain would not allow himself to be caught in such a transparent and easily predictable trap, making this example alone a powerful illustration of Lowe’s unsuitability to lead a political party.

He might parade his credentials as a man who is not a career politician, but unlike some who believe that political inexperience is an asset for an “insurgent” party, I take the view that politics is a genuine art in its own right.

To survive in the dog-eat-dog environment that it generates, competence is essential – which generally can only be achieved if the practitioner has innate ability and a great deal of experience. Lowe has neither.

With that, it is easy to predict that the life-span of his party is limited – just as easy as it is to predict that Reform, in the absence of coherent policies which would reassure voters that it was capable of government, is not going to gain the necessary electoral support that will project Farage to No 10.

Away from the vacuous chatter about Starmer and Burnham, therefore, there are already strong undercurrents that are shaping our political domain. But like true currents in the wild, these remain under the surface, invisible from above despite their powerful effects on those caught in them.

Regardless, though, we have no choice but to tolerate the torrent of empty, repetitive prattle. There is nothing else on offer from the legacy media – and our politics are all the poorer for it.