“You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting“

Count Adhemar, (Rufus Sewell) in the 2001 film ‘A Knight’s Tale’

Some are great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them, so the saying goes, but Russell Brand, who will be sentenced today for rape and sexual assault feels when you look back, that he was cringe-makingly thrust upon us all.

The media, including the BBC who I worked for at the time, were as culpable as any for selling and riding on the back of someone who for the get go for me was a charlatan, a fraud and a deeply unattractive individual. I would reproduce the New Statesman’s frankly ghastly photo of Brand in a clear homage to the famous painting of the Last Supper, with Brand as the Christ figure. I haven’t because I don’t have the rights and anyway on any level it wouldn’t be right.

Brand’s early works and his (ugh!) ‘Booky-Wook’ was like “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. I kept asking friends and colleagues why nobody could see that Russell, apart from a hideously unhidden desire to shed his clothing when ever opportunity arose, wasn’t actually wearing any. The frippery was all there was, everything else was transparent and bare. A no mark no talent for me, from day one, the boy who swallowed a dictionary but nothing he said meant very much.

Right so I’m the smart guy here? No.

With politicians, and celebrities, with commentators and comedians, I have made mistakes, so I don’t have special powers, but it is satisfying when you see a judgement you made based on available evidence from the start, be proven entirely correct.

Why did I dislike him so much? When we are attempting to judge a character we need to look at our biases and be honest with ourselves. Did I resent his fame? Did I hate the way he was pushed forward, when I was struggling to get promotion in TV and Radio? Was a jealous women seemed to adore him? Probably a bit of all of those things.

Judging people requires looking at all aspects of them, and oneself. It’s not sanctimonious to say this or suggest others apply it, it’s what makes the judgement sounder and more likely to be right.

I disliked the legislation on assisted dying and opposed it, because the law was badly written, rushed, and the system bent whichever way supporters could get away with to force it through. I think, and have said so, that some people opposed it from the start purely on religious grounds. Some were honest about that others not so much. They also thought the ball was legislatively flawed. They were right. My point is, whilst I join them in being pleased it ‘passed away’ we do need to be clear where our judgements originate from.

Beverly Turner, the GBNews presenter revived her 2023 view that the evidence of Brand’s guilt was scant and that he was “a hero”. The day after he was convicted.

‘Bev’ may have been convinced by his conversion, and by his ant-vax stance, but she had always been a bit ‘out there’ and contrarian. She won’t remember but I had dealings with her when I worked at the BBC probably fifteen years ago, and I looked at how she was, and how she engaged with people, and what she was saying, and thought: “nope, I can’t go along with any of this, and you are one of those who has a habit of being wrong”

It’s not personal. I don’t dislike or hate her; I’m just not listening or engaging. In my judgement it’s pointless. The only personal element to it, is that this is my view, and it’s entirely ok for others to hold a wildly different one.

I thought Vladimir Putin was a wrong ‘un, years before he even eyed Ukraine. It was his reaction and the behaviour of his goons, over the sinking of the submarine the Kursk, and his KGB history that I judged him on. He’s never done or said anything to change that opinion. Admiration of him by anyone gets my deepest contempt.

Lembit Opik, who I had cordial professional dealings with for many years was clearly not a serious politician when he was a Lib Dem and now he’s Reform. It’s not the parties I’m criticising – he’s just absurd. Not malignantly so, just by most criteria I’d judge him as of no serious significance.

I was once told off – rightly as it turns out – for tweeting about what an idiot Donald Trump was years before he was President the first time. The BBC felt I should not be saying such things as a political reporter about a man who might become a political leader. It was true I shouldn’t have, but then at that stage I didn’t think he would realise his ambition, I also thought he was a vainglorious blowhard that would be bad news for America. He talked of grabbing women in certain places that tarnished his bran in a way Brand actually tarnished some women’s lives.

This ‘bias’, and I’d call it judgement, did not stop me telling people Trump would win in 2016, and that having won in 2024 the Democrats, the left in the UK, and the shattered Tories just had to accept he was, by democratic right, the President again.  I have however always thought cosying up to him was a mistake.

Nigel Farage. Now there’s a tricky case. I have said many times he’s one of the most influential politicians of the last quarter of a century. He has seen so many political opponents come and go, and is still there. He’s good company, or certainly was. He has a fascinating and surprisingly widespread knowledge of the First World War, he can be very funny, charming when he wants to be, and has taken Reform to the heights it achieved last year.

The thing is having studied him, close up for a very long time, I just don’t buy him as a PM. He’s streets ahead of the rest of his set up, but I, actually reluctantly, concluded he isn’t a great judge of character, has a tendency to chew up people he once stood rock solidly behind, and a rather basic flaw that he hates detailed minutiae that matters.

I don’t dislike him, I certainly don’t hate him, indeed I have enjoyed his company many times in the past, but I judged him in terms of the role he says he wants and personally I find him wanting. I get that lots of people think still think otherwise.

There are people who dislike and feel averse to Kemi Badenoch. Some dislike her because she’s a Conservative. Some because they think she’s not conservative enough. Some don’t like her because she’s black, some because they think she isn’t British, some because of both. Some think she can be rude, and occasionally her tendency to bluntness can be seen that way. But I wrote about why I thought she was the right person for the job, and within that was a process of judgement.

I’m not paid, to like her. I’m certainly not pressured to. If I didn’t I’d say so. But I weighed, and measured, particularly the criticisms levelled at her an increasingly do not find her wanting. I think like David Cameron, Tony Blair and Maragaret Thatcher – and do not misread this – however they turned out as Prime Ministers had the feel before they were that they could handle the job.

I believe Kemi can handle the job. I did judge her. Sometimes quite hard. Some of my previous colleagues still do. But judgement is a constant process. If you believe someone starts in the right place they can get better and better, or like my big mistake with Robert Jenrick, can let you down, tell you one thing and do another, and fall in your estimation. It’s an iterative process, navigating gut instincts an previous judgement.

Learning not just where you got wrong but why you got it wrong.

Likewise people you thought were awful, inadequate and charlatans can change your mind, but consistency is the key, a mask slips and it become just more evidence of why you’d judged them negatively to start with.

My plea is not to say, ‘well done you, so you got things right’, that’s not the point. I want people to be more in how they weigh and measure people put before us to choose, and judge what they have and where they are wanting.

In this modern political landscape it’s become more wanted, than ever.