Could Channel 4's landmark Israel lobby investigation have been been made today?

Peter Oborne thinks his 2009 Dispatches episode would have been too hard to make in the Britain of 2021.

Peter Oborne and his team knew their film would come under attack, so supported it with a detailed written report. (Channel 4)

I just re-watched an episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches series which I still consider to be a landmark piece of British television.

Airing in November 2009, Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby was produced by Peter Oborne, an independently minded conservative journalist who I’ve always had a lot of time for.

In more recent years, Peter has been one of a vanishingly small number of British journalists (I can probably count us on one hand) to cover the manufactured “Labour anti-Semitism crisis” with anything even approaching a critical mind.

And Peter is probably the only one of us with a mainstream media profile.

But when I talked to him on the phone the other day he told me he thought it extremely unlikely his film could be made today.

And he agrees when I ask if what was done to Jeremy Corbyn has played a part in creating this environment.