JUDGING by RESULTS
Given the bad odour into which politics and politicians have fallen over recent months, inducing among swathes of the public a feeling of “a plague on all your houses”, it is neither surprising nor inappropriate that the general election results should disappoint everyone. Everyone, that is, except Naomi Long of the Alliance Party in Belfast East whose 23 percent swing kicked out of Westminster the Stormont First Minister, Peter Robinson (see my earlier posting The Woman Taken in Adultery); and except Caroline Lucas who won the first ever British parliamentary seat (Brighton Pavilion) for the party she leads, the Greens; and except Labour’s Margaret Hodge who had genuine reason to fear the challenge of the BNP leader Nick Griffin in her London East End seat of Barking but who, in the event, beat him four-to-one, kept him in third place and even reduced the vote share achieved by his predecessor by two percent.
By the same percentage, there was a swing in Barking from the Tories to Labour, on a night when the average swing from Labour to Conservative was five percent. Indeed, if Labour had done as well nationally as it did in both London and Scotland, Gordon Brown would now be handing out portfolios in a fourth successive Labour administration.
But Labour didn’t do anything like as well as that. No Cabinet ministers were unseated but two former Home Secretaries were. Few tears will be shed in Downing Street or anywhere else for Charles Clarke, a relentless critic of Brown after he wasn’t kept in the government. Jacqui Smith, somewhat unfairly over-tarnished by the parliamentary expenses scandal, was never going to hold Redditch, perilously retained in the 2005 election, but the nine percent swing away from her looked as though it contained a punitive element. Some good second-rank ministers lost – Vera Baird, Mike O’Brien, Chris Mole, Shahid Malik, Bill Rammell, Jim Knight, Angela Smith and others, including Gordon’s parliamentary private secretary Anne Snelgrove in Swindon South, the woman who said that she hugged him every day.
After all the supposed “Cleggmania”, the Lib Dems proved to be the dog that didn’t bark, increasing their vote only by one percent and taking a net loss of five seats, among them the really excellent medical specialist Evan Harris in Oxford West and that colourful character Lembit Opik on a staggering swing of thirteen percent to the Tories in Montgomeryshire. But the Liberals did take by a majority of exactly 800 the West Country seat of Wells, held since 1983 by David Heathcoat-Amory, old Etonian member of a well-known political family and tainted (literally) by manure in the expenses scandal.
Nick Clegg has announced that he believes David Cameron should be allowed the opportunity to attempt to form a government, seeing as the Tories are the largest party. Gordon Brown remains Prime Minister by convention and has graciously acknowledged that everyone should wait until Cameron and Clegg have done negotiating. Naturally enough, however, Brown has indicated why Clegg ought to throw in his lot with Labour after going through the motions with the Conservatives.
For his part, Cameron has made what he calls “a big, open and comprehensive offer” to the Lib Dems. He may, however, have thrust a broom handle through the wheels by ruling out of any negotiation the questions of Europe, defence, immigration amnesty and voting reform, offering on this last matter only “an all-party committee of enquiry”, which is to say nothing. This may be the clinching issue. Brown has proposed a referendum on the voting system and that must be more attractive to the Liberal Democrat party.
Were I Brown, I would go further. In return for a guarantee of support – which I suppose means in practice a coalition – I would offer Clegg another general election within twelve months, conducted under proportional representation. That ought to be an irresistible carrot for the Lib Dems. It gives Brown and Darling a chance to deliver what they believe they can deliver: an economic recovery this year without the cuts that the Tories intend to implement. It defines the arrangement as finite, allowing the possibility of Brown perhaps stepping aside early next year. It also seems to allow the Tories to believe that their inheritance is only postponed for a year. Twelve months is simultaneously an aeon and the bat of an eyelid. Making such an apparently tight timetable would give purpose to an exhausted Labour administration. And it would allow the opportunity for a little of the shine to rub off Clegg while he tries to make a parliamentary pact work in his party’s favour. I suggest that it is a creative, workable suggestion that has one huge advantage: everybody wins except the Tories.
A postscript about the BBC coverage: David Dimbleby’s problem with uninformative shots of cars might profitably be sorted out in the editorial office rather than on air. I had much more trouble with the continual truncating of interviews, frequently for what turned out to be no discernable reason. I also found Jeremy Paxman’s default position of vexed hectoring accompanied by a look of Martita Hunt imperiousness rather wearing. His not being able to understand that Lembit Opik might actually be quite upset about his defeat made him seem like the class bully. And he is surely experienced enough to know that politicians do not answer hypothetical questions if they can possibly help it. Putting an outrageous point does not necessarily provoke an outrageous response. In the end, I doubt that any of Paxman’s interviews furnished any memorable observations. Though I dislike him intensely and thought a lot of his interviewees were a waste of space, I found that Andrew Neill drew out many more intriguing answers. And a final suggestion for the BBC: the word "extraordinary" should be banned for five years, especially from the mouth of Fiona Bruce.
Showing posts with label Nick Griffin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Griffin. Show all posts
Friday, May 07, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
CLIMATE: A VERY MOUNTAIN
As the Copenhagen summit reaches its halfway point, the verdict is inevitably “so far, so predictable”. At the end of next week, we shall be saying “too little, too late”. Chivvied by Gordon Brown, Europe has promised funds it doesn’t have to nations it doesn’t care about in a gesture towards shoring up the barriers against the rising seas. But it isn’t enough and it doesn’t begin to tackle the problem’s source. In any case, we know that funding was promised before but didn’t materialise. When the credit banks drop Britain’s credit rating in nice time for the election, Brown will have to make much more savage cuts and clearly cutting overseas aid will be rather less painful to most voters than, say, closing schools and hospitals.
The melancholy anniversary of the Bhopal disaster has forcefully reminded us that Union Carbide literally got away with murder and that the toxic gases that did the damage are polluting the Bhopal area to this day. Neither the US nor the Indian government has seriously attempted either to mitigate definitively the effects of the spill or to reimburse its victims to any more than the most piffling extent. Why should anyone imagine that, when the seas engulf the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, anybody in the powerful nations will raise a finger? Only when the waters have risen sufficiently to swamp Venice and Amsterdam, Essex and Kent, Manhattan Island and the cities along the Danube will any governments go into crisis mode. And don’t bet against them deciding to write off their own low-lying areas and build barriers to keep the newly dispossessed off higher ground.
Whatever mealy-mouthed declaration has been compromised to death by the end of the summit, the climate change deniers will merely scoff. Denying the Holocaust perplexes most people with even a little brainpower because there is so much historical evidence in the face of which such absurdity flies. Denying climate change is more comfortable because ignoring scientists and researchers is second nature to those for whom so-called intelligent design and even creationism are perfectly acceptable philosophies. In any case, when such eminent thinkers as Jeremy Clarkson, Clive James and Nick Griffin pooh-pooh the science, it is clear that the argument is all but lost.
For my own part, I pooh-pooh the great scandal of the University of East Anglia emails. One pocket of ill-judged behaviour does not negate the findings of climatologists the world over for the last fifty years. We have seen for ourselves – almost daily on the news bulletins – the collapse of the snowfields, ice floes and glaciers. Do Clarkson and co propose that this footage is faked?
Consider the case that the climate change deniers are right. What’s the worst-case scenario? Well, quite a lot of money will have been spent, as they would argue, unnecessarily; though as the expenditure will have made the planet a more habitable place, saved some rain forest and a few species and so on, you could say that the downside is not unduly ghastly. And what if the climate change Cassandras are right, what then is the worst-case scenario? Oh right – we all die. Anybody find the debate finely balanced?
In fact I am sure that it is anyway too late. The collapse of the planet cannot now be arrested. Partly it is because too much damage has already been done. Partly it is that politicians do not have the political will or indeed the practical power to take the long-term decisions that might reverse the process. International capital, now far more untouchable than any government, is only concerned with short-term profit, which is why the organisers of climate change denial are all big-money interests. Any senator, congressman or radio shock-jock in the States who dismisses climate change as a pinko conspiracy is rewarded with big bucks. How can mere liberal politicians fight that?
Perhaps in our lifetimes, some of the fabulous creatures that we took for granted in our childhood will fall extinct: the tiger, the orang-utan, the rhinoceros, the blue whale, the mountain gorilla, the polar bear. Perhaps in our children’s lifetimes, human habitation will begin to be seriously eroded. Will our grandchildren indeed survive at all? If the seas don’t get them, will there not, as a swifter alternative, be some virulently uncontrollable virus, immune to any known remedy but very happy to spread through polluted water? That’s always assuming that no terrorists get their hands on nuclear capability before then, a rash assumption.
The new Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, will swing into Copenhagen for the summit’s climax, no doubt to bless – indeed, to encourage – its conclusions. I still hope for the best from this president. He seems to comprehend what is at stake – did his predecessor even know what carbon emissions are? – and he still seems to experience an instinctive feel for the plight of the whole world’s peoples, not just that of the poor, benighted oil barons. But can he deliver?
Were I a graphic artist, I should be tempted to a three-box strip cartoon. In the first box, Barack Obama is depicted standing alone, beaming and waving a sheet of paper on which may be seen a deal of writing. This piece of paper would be The Copenhagen Accord. The resonances of Chamberlain after Munich would not be inappropriate. In the second box, Obama’s face would have clouded as his enemies attack him. Being pygmies, they have to stand on each other’s shoulders as they try to wrest from his grasp the sheet of paper, on which the writing is already smeared. Meanwhile, the waters have risen, up to the armpits of the lower level of opponents, up to the thighs of the president, but nobody is looking at the waters. In the third box, Obama is alone again, looking dejected. The waters have risen to his neck. The sheet of paper, now blank, floats. Here and there a few bubbles indicate where the opponents have gone under. The legend under this strip would be: Watered Down.
As the Copenhagen summit reaches its halfway point, the verdict is inevitably “so far, so predictable”. At the end of next week, we shall be saying “too little, too late”. Chivvied by Gordon Brown, Europe has promised funds it doesn’t have to nations it doesn’t care about in a gesture towards shoring up the barriers against the rising seas. But it isn’t enough and it doesn’t begin to tackle the problem’s source. In any case, we know that funding was promised before but didn’t materialise. When the credit banks drop Britain’s credit rating in nice time for the election, Brown will have to make much more savage cuts and clearly cutting overseas aid will be rather less painful to most voters than, say, closing schools and hospitals.
The melancholy anniversary of the Bhopal disaster has forcefully reminded us that Union Carbide literally got away with murder and that the toxic gases that did the damage are polluting the Bhopal area to this day. Neither the US nor the Indian government has seriously attempted either to mitigate definitively the effects of the spill or to reimburse its victims to any more than the most piffling extent. Why should anyone imagine that, when the seas engulf the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, anybody in the powerful nations will raise a finger? Only when the waters have risen sufficiently to swamp Venice and Amsterdam, Essex and Kent, Manhattan Island and the cities along the Danube will any governments go into crisis mode. And don’t bet against them deciding to write off their own low-lying areas and build barriers to keep the newly dispossessed off higher ground.
Whatever mealy-mouthed declaration has been compromised to death by the end of the summit, the climate change deniers will merely scoff. Denying the Holocaust perplexes most people with even a little brainpower because there is so much historical evidence in the face of which such absurdity flies. Denying climate change is more comfortable because ignoring scientists and researchers is second nature to those for whom so-called intelligent design and even creationism are perfectly acceptable philosophies. In any case, when such eminent thinkers as Jeremy Clarkson, Clive James and Nick Griffin pooh-pooh the science, it is clear that the argument is all but lost.
For my own part, I pooh-pooh the great scandal of the University of East Anglia emails. One pocket of ill-judged behaviour does not negate the findings of climatologists the world over for the last fifty years. We have seen for ourselves – almost daily on the news bulletins – the collapse of the snowfields, ice floes and glaciers. Do Clarkson and co propose that this footage is faked?
Consider the case that the climate change deniers are right. What’s the worst-case scenario? Well, quite a lot of money will have been spent, as they would argue, unnecessarily; though as the expenditure will have made the planet a more habitable place, saved some rain forest and a few species and so on, you could say that the downside is not unduly ghastly. And what if the climate change Cassandras are right, what then is the worst-case scenario? Oh right – we all die. Anybody find the debate finely balanced?
In fact I am sure that it is anyway too late. The collapse of the planet cannot now be arrested. Partly it is because too much damage has already been done. Partly it is that politicians do not have the political will or indeed the practical power to take the long-term decisions that might reverse the process. International capital, now far more untouchable than any government, is only concerned with short-term profit, which is why the organisers of climate change denial are all big-money interests. Any senator, congressman or radio shock-jock in the States who dismisses climate change as a pinko conspiracy is rewarded with big bucks. How can mere liberal politicians fight that?
Perhaps in our lifetimes, some of the fabulous creatures that we took for granted in our childhood will fall extinct: the tiger, the orang-utan, the rhinoceros, the blue whale, the mountain gorilla, the polar bear. Perhaps in our children’s lifetimes, human habitation will begin to be seriously eroded. Will our grandchildren indeed survive at all? If the seas don’t get them, will there not, as a swifter alternative, be some virulently uncontrollable virus, immune to any known remedy but very happy to spread through polluted water? That’s always assuming that no terrorists get their hands on nuclear capability before then, a rash assumption.
The new Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, will swing into Copenhagen for the summit’s climax, no doubt to bless – indeed, to encourage – its conclusions. I still hope for the best from this president. He seems to comprehend what is at stake – did his predecessor even know what carbon emissions are? – and he still seems to experience an instinctive feel for the plight of the whole world’s peoples, not just that of the poor, benighted oil barons. But can he deliver?
Were I a graphic artist, I should be tempted to a three-box strip cartoon. In the first box, Barack Obama is depicted standing alone, beaming and waving a sheet of paper on which may be seen a deal of writing. This piece of paper would be The Copenhagen Accord. The resonances of Chamberlain after Munich would not be inappropriate. In the second box, Obama’s face would have clouded as his enemies attack him. Being pygmies, they have to stand on each other’s shoulders as they try to wrest from his grasp the sheet of paper, on which the writing is already smeared. Meanwhile, the waters have risen, up to the armpits of the lower level of opponents, up to the thighs of the president, but nobody is looking at the waters. In the third box, Obama is alone again, looking dejected. The waters have risen to his neck. The sheet of paper, now blank, floats. Here and there a few bubbles indicate where the opponents have gone under. The legend under this strip would be: Watered Down.
Friday, October 23, 2009
The GRIFFIN HAS LANDED
After a great deal of somewhat scattergun controversy, BBC1’s Question Time was finally broadcast this evening. The programme usually manages to keep its nose clean but, on this occasion, it had extended an invitation to the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. Called upon to justify the invitation, the BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson, wrote in the morning’s Guardian that “the BNP has demonstrated a level of support that would normally lead to an occasional invitation”.
An earlier leader in the paper disagreed. “The British National Party will be handed a gift … a specious legitimacy” it declared. Peter Hain, a veteran of the anti-apartheid movement as well as a British cabinet minister, went in for more overheated language: “The BBC will be showcasing the BNP”. Hardly, Peter. A letter-writer complained of the BBC giving the party “the oxygen of publicity”. Well, the company one keeps is instructive and quoting Thatcher suggests a wish to censor, ban and suppress unwelcome views (of any kind) rather than to confront perceived fascism.
I wholly support the BBC’s invitation to Griffin for one simple reason: I am a democrat. You can’t allow people to run for office and then deny them the access that such office ordinarily confers. Other minority parties have done their turn on Question Time once they have elected representatives. If you support democracy, you must accept the results it throws up. George W Bush had to face that, to his chagrin, when the Palestinians voted Hamas into power.
On this matter, then, I found myself in alarming agreement with Kelvin McKenzie who said on the news that the BBC could not be found to be at fault for inviting Griffin and that if you wanted to blame anyone, you had to blame the electorate.
Hain and – takes a nice picture, doesn't he – Griffin; from Guardian website
In his piece, Hain tried to absolve the electorate by implying they were ignorant. “At the European elections that triggered this BBC decision,” he wrote, “many voted for the BNP as a protest against the mainstream parties at the height of the MPs’ expenses scandal. Few of these voters would recognise, still less endorse, the BNP’s virulent racism”.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Whether you like it or not, there is still plenty of barely expressed racism around. When the MPs’ expenses are forgotten, there will still be people voting for the BNP and Hain will have to find another rationale. What Griffin aims to do is to harness that racism, make it seem respectable and hone it into a real political force.
Fortunately for us, Griffin is not an inspiring, charismatic, eloquent or even coherent leader. His positions are – on the evidence of this “showcase” – both confused and shifting. He is apt to pluck assertions out of the air that he cannot back up with evidence, rhetoric or homework. His attempts to be genial and apparently ready to laugh at himself are cheesy and unpersuasive. There is a natural constituency of Neanderthals who would happily back him if he couldn’t pronounce his own name – we glimpsed a selection of them playing at being his henchmen in news footage of his arrival at Television Centre – but, on the evidence of his performance on Question Time, it’s hard to imagine that a significant number would be moved to throw in their lot with him.
Mind you, if the impression of the entire establishment ganging up on him did him any favour, he could certainly look upon his appearance with considerable satisfaction. The mainstream politicos on the panel scrambled to get the most wounding pre-emptive strike in first. And, as it panned out, the programme’s focus was very heavily on Griffin, out of step on everything with everyone, not least on the only non-BNP-oriented question, which was about Jan Moir’s article on Stephen Gately. The BNP doesn’t do gay solidarity (though if Griffin cares to look at the history of the far right in Britain and elsewhere, he may find much that would not be to his taste in the sexual shenanigans department).
Amusingly, according to the OED, a griffin, as well as being a winged monster, is “a European newly arrived in India, and unaccustomed to Indian ways and peculiarities; a novice, new-comer, greenhorn” and also “a mulatto”. Perhaps Griffin was fated to spend his life struggling against what he sees as the diminution of the power of “indigenous people” of Britain. In allying that struggle to his denunciation of Islam as “wicked and vicious”, of the major parties for their policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, and of Hamas – he claims his is the only party unequivocally supportive of Israel – he may well have struck some chords. Wisely, the other panellists did not engage him very far on these issues.
In the event, the programme was fairly even-tempered. There had been dark anticipations of braying racists and anti-fascists in the studio but the Question Time audience is much more carefully vetted than its equivalent on Radio 4’s Any Questions? Indeed, only one (pretty innocuous) speaker from the floor appeared to be at all supportive of Griffin.
It was a different story at the gates of Television Centre where angry demonstrators breached the security cordon. This is not too difficult: David Cassidy fans managed it in the early 1970s. BBC News made great play of the build-up to the transmission, so much so that three (count ‘em) reporters were deployed to the TC gates for the 6.00 pm bulletin. Well, I suppose it was nice for them to get out of the office. I just hope they didn’t put in for excessive expenses.
After a great deal of somewhat scattergun controversy, BBC1’s Question Time was finally broadcast this evening. The programme usually manages to keep its nose clean but, on this occasion, it had extended an invitation to the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. Called upon to justify the invitation, the BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson, wrote in the morning’s Guardian that “the BNP has demonstrated a level of support that would normally lead to an occasional invitation”.
An earlier leader in the paper disagreed. “The British National Party will be handed a gift … a specious legitimacy” it declared. Peter Hain, a veteran of the anti-apartheid movement as well as a British cabinet minister, went in for more overheated language: “The BBC will be showcasing the BNP”. Hardly, Peter. A letter-writer complained of the BBC giving the party “the oxygen of publicity”. Well, the company one keeps is instructive and quoting Thatcher suggests a wish to censor, ban and suppress unwelcome views (of any kind) rather than to confront perceived fascism.
I wholly support the BBC’s invitation to Griffin for one simple reason: I am a democrat. You can’t allow people to run for office and then deny them the access that such office ordinarily confers. Other minority parties have done their turn on Question Time once they have elected representatives. If you support democracy, you must accept the results it throws up. George W Bush had to face that, to his chagrin, when the Palestinians voted Hamas into power.
On this matter, then, I found myself in alarming agreement with Kelvin McKenzie who said on the news that the BBC could not be found to be at fault for inviting Griffin and that if you wanted to blame anyone, you had to blame the electorate.
Hain and – takes a nice picture, doesn't he – Griffin; from Guardian website
In his piece, Hain tried to absolve the electorate by implying they were ignorant. “At the European elections that triggered this BBC decision,” he wrote, “many voted for the BNP as a protest against the mainstream parties at the height of the MPs’ expenses scandal. Few of these voters would recognise, still less endorse, the BNP’s virulent racism”.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Whether you like it or not, there is still plenty of barely expressed racism around. When the MPs’ expenses are forgotten, there will still be people voting for the BNP and Hain will have to find another rationale. What Griffin aims to do is to harness that racism, make it seem respectable and hone it into a real political force.
Fortunately for us, Griffin is not an inspiring, charismatic, eloquent or even coherent leader. His positions are – on the evidence of this “showcase” – both confused and shifting. He is apt to pluck assertions out of the air that he cannot back up with evidence, rhetoric or homework. His attempts to be genial and apparently ready to laugh at himself are cheesy and unpersuasive. There is a natural constituency of Neanderthals who would happily back him if he couldn’t pronounce his own name – we glimpsed a selection of them playing at being his henchmen in news footage of his arrival at Television Centre – but, on the evidence of his performance on Question Time, it’s hard to imagine that a significant number would be moved to throw in their lot with him.
Mind you, if the impression of the entire establishment ganging up on him did him any favour, he could certainly look upon his appearance with considerable satisfaction. The mainstream politicos on the panel scrambled to get the most wounding pre-emptive strike in first. And, as it panned out, the programme’s focus was very heavily on Griffin, out of step on everything with everyone, not least on the only non-BNP-oriented question, which was about Jan Moir’s article on Stephen Gately. The BNP doesn’t do gay solidarity (though if Griffin cares to look at the history of the far right in Britain and elsewhere, he may find much that would not be to his taste in the sexual shenanigans department).
Amusingly, according to the OED, a griffin, as well as being a winged monster, is “a European newly arrived in India, and unaccustomed to Indian ways and peculiarities; a novice, new-comer, greenhorn” and also “a mulatto”. Perhaps Griffin was fated to spend his life struggling against what he sees as the diminution of the power of “indigenous people” of Britain. In allying that struggle to his denunciation of Islam as “wicked and vicious”, of the major parties for their policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, and of Hamas – he claims his is the only party unequivocally supportive of Israel – he may well have struck some chords. Wisely, the other panellists did not engage him very far on these issues.
In the event, the programme was fairly even-tempered. There had been dark anticipations of braying racists and anti-fascists in the studio but the Question Time audience is much more carefully vetted than its equivalent on Radio 4’s Any Questions? Indeed, only one (pretty innocuous) speaker from the floor appeared to be at all supportive of Griffin.
It was a different story at the gates of Television Centre where angry demonstrators breached the security cordon. This is not too difficult: David Cassidy fans managed it in the early 1970s. BBC News made great play of the build-up to the transmission, so much so that three (count ‘em) reporters were deployed to the TC gates for the 6.00 pm bulletin. Well, I suppose it was nice for them to get out of the office. I just hope they didn’t put in for excessive expenses.
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