BBC’s Silent Night: ‘Freezing This Christmas’ The Song They Don’t Want You to Hear

Frozen Out: BBC Silences Pensioner Satire This Christmas

When did the BBC become so squeamish about political satire? A scathing musical critique of Sir Keir Starmer’s and Rachel Reeves’s assault on pensioner welfare is storming the download charts, yet our public broadcaster seems to have developed a convenient case of selective deafness.

“Freezing This Christmas” by Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers (a title that manages to be both wickedly funny and devastatingly accurate) sits atop the UK’s official singles downloads chart, its popularity driven by a brutal truth: up to 4,000 pensioners could die this winter due to Labour’s callous cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance. The song, set to Mud’s “Lonely This Christmas”, delivers its message with all the subtlety of a frozen water pipe bursting after a boiler burst.

The lyrics, written by freelance marketer Chris Middleton, feature lines like “It’ll be freezing this Christmas / Without fuel at home / It’ll be freezing this Christmas / While Keir Starmer is warm / It’ll be cold, so cold / Without fuel at home…” and “Merry Christmas, Keir / I hope you can sleep at night.” 

With 1.6 million YouTube views and counting, the parody has clearly struck a chord with a public increasingly disillusioned by Labour’s bait-and-switch politics. The irony of a Labour government forcing pensioners to choose between heating and eating isn’t lost on anyone – except, apparently, the BBC’s playlist curators.

Rob Davis, an original member of Mud, put it plainly: “That’s not a good thing. There are a lot of very broke people over here. It’s very hard.” His understated assessment carries more weight than a thousand government press releases.

Dean Ager, the singer on the track, has claimed the BBC’s refusal to play the song is “giving them bad publicity for being so biased”.

Rob Davis, charitably suggests the BBC is “being really careful.” Perhaps too careful. In their desperate attempt to appear impartial, they’ve achieved the opposite – demonstrating exactly the kind of institutional bias they claim to avoid.

The BBC’s mealy-mouthed response that programming decisions are “always made with the relevant audiences and context in mind” rings particularly hollow. This is the same broadcaster that censored “Fairytale of New York” but somehow finds time to air countless politically safe Christmas platitudes. Their selective programming history – including the notorious blacklisting of “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” during the Thatcher era – suggests a pattern of political squeamishness that would make a Victorian governess blush.

The song’s proceeds are going to elderly support charities – a fact that makes the BBC’s refusal to play it even more grotesque. William Hill may give it 12/1 odds of reaching Christmas number one, but the real odds we should be concerned about are those facing Britain’s pensioners this winter.

Meanwhile, the Scottish government announced plans to restore winter fuel payments for all pensioners next year.

As pensioners huddle under blankets this Christmas, perhaps they can take cold comfort in knowing that somewhere, in a well-heated BBC studio, a producer is carefully protecting them from songs about their plight. After all, we wouldn’t want to politicise hypothermia, would we?

The BBC’s silence speaks volumes. And in that silence, you can almost hear the sound of teeth chattering in cold homes across Britain.

This Red Tory government have no shame…However, the question remains: In a democratic society, should institutional discomfort with political criticism trump the public’s right to hear voices of protest through mainstream channels?

Paul Knaggs

Editor, founder, Labour Heartlands, Citizen journalist. LeFT wing political refugee. Fighting a constant struggle with dyslexia that’s overcome with a burning desire to speak out against the corrupt political system and the social injustices it creates. Advocate for Free speech and open, accountable, democracy. #GTTO