There was much predictable absurdity about the award of Best British Film for I, Daniel Blake at the BAFTAs. We had the Leftist film establishment at their lavish banquet with Royal patronage applauding the Marxist film director, Ken Loach.
“The rest of us on the other side… filmmakers know which side they are on, and despite the glitz and glamour of occasions like this, we are with the people,” declared Loach after an unhinged attack on the “callous brutality” of the Conservative Government.
Yet while the pampered elite love this stuff, “the people” that Loach claims to speak for appear rather less keen. In 2016, among British cinema goers, I, Daniel Blake was the 85th most watched film – as measured in box office takings. This compared, for instance, to Captain America: Civil War in sixth place, or London Has Fallen in 24th place: movies with rather more Conservative messages but where politics is subordinate to producing a film that people might wish to see.
BAFTA has become a clique which hands out awards to each other. The “Chair” of the BAFTA film committee is Pippa Harris who executive-produced We Are Many – a documentary about protests against the Iraq War in 2003. This is a self-indulgent world of agitprop celebration far removed from the lives and concerns of “ordinary people” who, to their bemusement, discover that Loach has appointed himself as their spokesman.
Yet Loach has been defeated at the ballot box as resoundingly as the box office. He was vigorous in supporting the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition in the 2012 London Assembly elections only for that fringe far left party to receive less than 1% of the vote.
The film I, Daniel Blake is a dreary portrayal of the welfare system. Loach gives his characters the chance to denounce “Tory cuts”. It is true that the welfare system contains much bureaucratic inflexibility and box-ticking. The absurdity is the suggestion from Loach that this is due to sheer spite from the Conservative Government – or the previous Coalition and Labour Governments.
In order to create his narrative it was necessary to portray Job Centre staff as heartless. Exceptionally grim scenarios are presented as typical.
I would argue that reforms like Universal Credit make the system more humane and mean fewer people are trapped in the welfare system when they are, in fact, able to work.
Loach clearly disagrees and feels that more welfare spending is a moral imperative. Then why does this millionaire film producer keep suckling on his own most inequitable form of welfare dependency? He is quite content to take subsidies from the taxes – and lottery ticket proceeds – of the poor.
Jimmy’s Hall – a film in praise of an Irish communist – received £1,015,000 from the British Film Institute. Loach’s firm, Sixteen Films, received a grant of £172,828 from Creative Europe, a quango funded by the EU. Some of that went on I, Daniel Blake. No wonder Loach backed Remain in the referendum.
The Lottery-funded New Cinema Fund supported another pro-IRA film by Loach, The Wind That Shakes The Barley.
It is hard to imagine the British Film Institute (whose “Chair” is Greg Dyke) funding a production with an alternative political message. The BFI groans with political correctness – “All productions in receipt of BFI Lottery funding now need to work with us to demonstrate diversity both in front of and behind the camera.”
The BFI gets £54 million a year from the National Lottery to spray around to all the sanctimonious luvvies for their unwanted films. It gets another £1 million from the Arts Council – that is the taxpayer.
Does Loach really feel that he and others in the Cannes set – rather than the poor – are the deserving recipients of all these funds?
Comedy might not be Loach’s forte. But there is splendid unintentional humour in this class warrior standing up at a dinner sponsored by large corporations to denounce the Government that pays him so handsomely to keep churning out his Marxist drivel.
