The BBC made the mistake of asking radio listeners of its Today show what they think about an important question, and got an answer not to its liking. As befits an elitist outfit with a guarranteed revenue source, it proceeded to air a panel of commentators to sneer at the rubes who participated in the exercise. This sort of thing has happened before.

The particular question this time is rather an important one: who runs Britain?

The listeners responded that none other than Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission is in charge.

Our friend Peter Glover reports on the affair in Wire From the Bunker:

Today listener's apparently understand that which the BBC producers have yet to grasp, that the ornate building on Parliament Square is today an historic anachronism while the real decisions are taken behind closed doors in Brussels.

So how was the soldily pro—EU BBC to handle this latest embrassment. Why, by rubbishing the IQ of its listeners.

Christopher Booker of the Telegraph also noticed the spectacle of intellectual snobbery:

Sage commentators, led by the BBC's political correspondent, Nick Robinson, couldn't wait to pour scorn on their naivety, for believing that this lacklustre little Brussels apparatchik has more power than Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.

But in a way the last laugh was on the commentators themselves. Both Mr Robinson and Nicholas Watt, the Brussels correspondent of The Guardian, sneeringly pointed out that power in Brussels rests not with Mr Barroso but with "the council of ministers", as evidenced in that pre—Christmas row over the EU budget.

This schoolboy howler only showed yet again how ignorant most commentators are about how our EU system of government works.

I am deeply sympathetic to the plight facing our cousins in the UK. Not only is their political correctness suffocating, they are losing their sovereignty to an unaccountable corrupt authority in Brussels, and must pay roughly two hundred dollars a year to the BBC in order to be inulted by cheerleaders for all things leftist.

Thomas Lifson  1 09 06