Bel is thinking

Three stories from the Daily Mail today:

• a Cabinet minister who turned up late for a hospital function was photoshopped (by the hospital, and allegedly with his knowledge) into a picture taken earlier, so as to give the impression that he had arrived and posed with the other MPs there;
• allegations that the X-factor contest has been fixed, and the finalists have already been chosen, even at this early stage in the contest; and
• Nigella Lawson is accused of faking a bus trip on her television programme.

So what’s going on here? Every day, someone is accused of faking something, and these days it tends to be people whom one would assume, should have known better. (I must reiterate here that the X-factor and Nigella stories are merely allegations, at this stage.)

Together with the recent television phone-in scandals, there seems to be something interesting happening to our morals as a society. It would appear that it is  no longer important to get the facts right, so long as the bigger ’story’ or narrative, is in place. (I touched on this last week in my post about Miranda Grell.)

Earlier tonight, I watched the newspaper review on Sky News, featuring Iain Dale and Baroness Billingham, a Labour peer. Iain quite reasonably suggested that James Purnell, the Cabinet minister referred to above, should apologise for his part in the photoshop affair. The Sky News presenter (most likely playing devil’s advocate) wondered whether it was a big deal at all, because James Purnell did actually go to the hospital, even if a little later than the other MPs. The Baroness eagerly jumped on this, agreeing heartily. In her view, the photoshopped picture didn’t matter, because James Purnell derived no personal benefit (I dispute that: for a politician, publicity is a ‘personal benefit’; but let that pass), and that this was for a good cause, namely helping the hospital.

There is this whole idea that deliberate inaccuracies do not matter, as long as the objective, or the story, is valid, or for a good cause. I find that troubling. We saw that a few years ago in the case of the Mirror newspaper and the faked torture pictures. When the pictures were discovered to be fake, the defence used by the newspaper was along the lines of, ‘the pictures might have been fake, but the stories of abuse which they were highlighting, were true.’ That is a very dangerous line of reasoning, and one that has crept into social and political discourse. If even a hospital now sees nothing wrong in faking photographs, I wonder where we are headed as a country.

Is it also any wonder that exam standards are falling? A few months ago, Civitas published a report about how political correctness has corrupted the school curriculum. According to the report, teachers had ceased to teach the basics in some subjects, substituting fashionable theories for plain old facts. Such a state of affairs can only thrive in an environment where facts are not respected. For political correctness to reign in the classroom, there would first have to have been a downgrading of facts. Historical facts that are deemed ‘inconvenient’ would have to be disregarded, and then supplanted with fashionable doctrines. The same with any geographical or even biological facts that do not fit in with the new morality.

So it is that there is a disregard for facts, even in the classroom. A school, especially at elementary level, should be a place free of agenda, full of questioning, and with more than a passing regard for basic facts. That this is not the case is highlighted by news this week that a father has applied to court for an order to stop Al Gore’s climate change movie being shown in the classrooms. Gore’s movie is by no means the last word on climate change, its science has actually been challenged in places by serious scholars of the subject. For the Government to allow it to be shown in schools without giving room for a counter-view is just more evidence of the prevailing disregard for facts.

And let us not even get into the Iraq dossier. There is a view in some quarters that it mattered not that the evidence was blatantly falsified, so long as it fulfilled the noble aim of dislodging Saddam Hussein from power.

Back to James Purnell. The Conservative Party has called for his resignation. However, I don’t think he will resign. He will probably not even bother to apologise. In his mind, he probably feels that he has done no wrong. In typical New Labour fashion, he has already put all the blame on the hospital. In any case, he will probably spring for the ‘Baroness Billingham defence’: this was all in aid of a good cause, so what’s a little untruth here or there?

Just wondering why the sudden and eager adoption of conservative principles by Gordon Brown and New Labour is not being described in the media as a ‘lurch’ to the right. Or is that language only reserved for the Conservative Party?

Still, one good thing about this new-found conservatism among the Labour leadership, is that it makes it harder for Labour to accuse the Conservative Party of extremism. They can hardly accuse the Conservatives of ‘lurching’ to the right, when they themselves are speaking the language of conservatism.

The Conservative Party should therefore be bold, and use next week’s Conference to restate the core principles of conservatism. There is nothing to fear. The real conservative message is an attractive one; if it were not so, Labour would not be preaching it right now. And the Conservative Party can be confident of one thing: in the mouth of a Labour politician, the conservative message sounds inauthentic, opportunistic and hypocritical. Only a true conservative can convey his beliefs with sincerity and conviction. If there is such a person still left within the Conservative Party, may I suggest they hunt him down, and give him a platform to preach the word?

I’ve been watching journalists fall over themselves to praise Gordon Brown’s speech, but what I haven’t heard many of them point out is that some of the problems Gordon Brown identified yesterday were in existence in 1997, since when the Labour Government has had ten years to put them right. In fact, some of the problems were actually created by this Government, a Government in which Gordon Brown has been a key player.

Much of the media seem to be suffering from some sort of amnesia - a post-Tony Blair mind-wipe, if you like. Do they not remember that this very Gordon Brown was in charge of the nation’s purse strings for the last ten years? Ironic that in this so-called age of ‘no spin politics’, Gordon Brown seems to have blinded the media with the greatest spin of all.

And another thing: this wall-to-wall fawning coverage, complete with election speculation, makes me wonder whether there’s any bad news being buried this week. Surely someone somewhere will seize the opportunity.

The more I have to endure of Gordon Brown grinning all over the media, the more I want him to call a General Election and get it over with.

Contrary to what you may read in the newspapers, not all conservatives are panicking at the prospect of an Autumn election. This one is not. In fact, if the Conservative Party were to be defeated in a General Election, I would prefer it to be now. The party has done badly all summer, and an election defeat will most likely not be anywhere near as bad as many predict. For one thing, it may send the clearest possible signal to the party’s leaders about what the public really do think of them and their policies. Then, having got the defeat out of the way, the party can begin to prepare seriously for the next elections.

Another reason why I wouldn’t mind the Conservative Party losing a General Election now is that the consequences of Gordon Brown’s ten-year stewardship of the economy will be becoming more apparent in the next few years. I would like him to be in place to carry the can when all this happens, so that there will be no excuses. Then when he is defeated at the elections after that, it will be a thorough defeat, a wholesale rejection of all that he and his party have stood for over the decade. In other words, the sort of rejection the Conservative Party have become used to, and which they have been trying, with some success, to overcome.

I’m a bit late, but would like to register my support for Tim Ireland, the author of Bloggerheads. His blog has been forced offline because he had the temerity to write some things that were displeasing to a certain ex-convict from Uzbekistan.

Very worrying. Tim hadn’t written anything libellous, but Alisher Usmanov (the aforementioned Uzbek) is a really touchy fellow with a lot of money. Following dark threats from his lawyers, Tim’s webhosts panicked and pulled the plug on his blog, and for good measure, also took down a few other blogs that were being managed by Tim.

This is truly disconcerting. As Mr Eugenides very splendidly put it:

If you can be silenced for calling a businessman a crook, then you can be silenced for calling a politician a crook, too. Then it’s everyone’s problem.

Tim should be back online soon, no doubt with a hosting company with proper backbone. Looking forward to the return of Bloggerheads.

For more details on this story, check out Chicken Yoghurt.

Miranda Grell was yesterday found guilty under the Representation of Peoples Act 1983 of making false statements about a candidate. Part of the allegations were that, during the 2006 local council elections, Ms Grell, a Labour candidate, went around telling people that the LibDem candidate was a paedophile.

She had denied the charges, and for some reason, I believed her. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the case, so let’s see if she appeals.

On the other hand, I suppose this case shows us (as if we needed telling) that this business of smearing opponents occurs in all political parties. To hear some Labour activists tell it, the Conservatives and LibDems are ravenous wolves, while they (the poor Labour men and women) are the meekest of lambs.

I hear Ms Grell has been suspended by the Labour Party. If this is true, then I am mystified. The Labour Party in government has conducted itself with the three-pronged spear of smear, spin and slander (remember, for example, Rose Addis, David Kelly and Demetrious Panton). For the party now to turn around and cast into outer darkness the daughter whom they raised in their own likeness, I find truly mystifying.

In any case, surely the punishment from the court is more than enough? She has been fined and banned from public office for three years, not to mention the loss of her good name. I can understand the need for a political party to want to distance itself from someone who has been found guilty of such an offence, but are we to believe, if Ms Grell did smear her opponent, that she did so without being reported to local party activists? Or did she do so, knowing that such tactics, while not encouraged by her local party, would not also be expressly discouraged? Either way, for good or bad, she worked for her party. Even if she has done wrong, it would still be good to see her party reach out, take her back under its wing, and help her back onto her feet. She is a young woman who has made mistakes, some of which she admitted to during the court hearing. While I am not expecting the Labour Party to praise her for her conduct, it would be good to see someone reach out to the prodigal daughter and help her rebuild her life and her political career.

Why am I being sympathetic to Miranda Grell? To be honest, I don’t know. I asked myself if I would be so sympathetic to Andrew Pelling, the Conservative MP, if he were later to be found guilty of assaulting his wife. Probably not.

Maybe I am sympathetic to Miranda Grell because I feel that she is a victim of the poisoned political atmosphere in which she came of age. An atmosphere in which lies are of equal validity with the truth, and where the only thing that matters is achieving one’s political objective. For if you believe that your political philosophy is right, why let a little thing like morality get in the way? If you believe that a Labour victory is the best thing for the country (and you believe that earnestly), you may well conclude that whatever you do to achieve it is morally just, as you are after all working ‘for a good cause’. I have no idea if these thoughts went through Ms Grell’s mind. All I know is that this state of affairs has persisted for some time, one in which common decency and morality are disregarded in pursuit of what politicians (particularly on the left) regard as the ‘greater good’. If Miranda Grell has fallen into that trap, it is something I can understand, even if not condone. Perhaps that is at the root of my sympathy for her.

Just realised that I haven’t seen or heard much from David Davis during this period of Cameron’s woes. It would be good to see a few such Conservative politicians of substance from time to time. Kenneth Clarke was on the television during the Northern Rock saga earlier in the week, and just listening to him reminded me that the Conservative Party still has some very experienced and knowledgeable  politicians. It’s a pity we don’t see more of them these days.

I am not a fan of David Cameron, as every reader of this blog would know, but even so, I feel a measure of sympathy for the man who has been revealed by the latest ICM poll to be the least popular party leader.

For you see, David Cameron set much store by his image. He was the one who would, in that horrible expression, ‘decontaminate the Tory brand’. David Cameron was to be the saviour of the Conservative Party, the one who would make us seem like a decent party for whom normal people could vote without shame.

I suppose it worked for a time, as witnessed by the high poll ratings earlier in the year. But the honeymoon was only ever going to last so long, after which one would have expected the Party to have come up with enough goodies to retain the public’s interest. I think that that was where the whole thing fell apart. Indications that the David Cameron ‘brand’ had begun to lose its appeal were evident way back in the summer when the Conservative Party performed woefully in the Ealing South by-elections, despite labelling themselves on the ballot paper as ‘Cameron’s Conservatives’. That probably alerted David Cameron to the fact that time was perhaps ripe to change strategy.

It is good that the Party has moved on from parading David Cameron as its saviour - he is not. His main achievement was to convince the pubic to start listening to the Conservative Party once again. But that is only a good thing if the Party is saying things that the public want to hear. But is it? At a time when taxpayers are groaning under increasing levels of taxation, David Cameron’s party is debating whether to tax us even more. At a time when taxpayers’ funds are being heavily wasted by an incompetent Government, George Osborne is promising to stick to the Government’s spending levels. Is it therefore any wonder that, having briefly unstopped their ears to hear what the Conservative Party was saying, the public have concluded that not much of it is of any interest to them?

The Conservative Party is a great party, capable of doing much good if elected to serve. Its underlying principles of individual responsibility, low taxation and personal freedom, appeal across the board to many. However, for those members of the public who would have liked to hear more of the traditional Conservative message, there has been disappointment. The Party’s current leaders seem to have swallowed whole the erroneous doctrine that the traditional Conservative message is nasty, mean-spirited, and divisive. It is not. It is to David Cameron’s credit that he has made it possible for the Party to have a fair hearing, but now, he should be bolder. Not only must he restate the core principles that undergird the Conservative Party, he must consciously adopt policies that reflect these principles.

I’ve been reading a lot of commentary about how Lady Thatcher’s visit today to 10 Downing Street is just a PR stunt by Gordon Brown.

That may be so, but there is also another issue.

Gordon Brown is no fool. There is no way he would have allowed himself to be seen anywhere near Lady Thatcher, a woman who has been demonised by so many in his party, if he did not believe that there was real political capital to be gained in doing so. Brown is an astute politician, with an eye for the votes; he recognises that Lady Thatcher still appeals to many, and not just those who are often described as ‘traditional Tories’.

Lady Thatcher also is no fool. No-one could accuse her of political naiveté. By going to visit Gordon Brown on the day that the Conservative Party launched that ridiculous green report, she may well have been sending David Cameron and his boys the following message: ‘keep wasting time on stupid ideas and you will never come anywhere near 10 Downing Street’.

Seeing Lady Thatcher in front of that famous black door will achieve something else: it will remind real conservatives how much time has passed since they last held office. Perhaps it will inspire them to want to win again. It has often been said that Tory MPs act as though they are not that interested in the party winning a General Election ever again.

More than anything else, the sight of Gordon Brown standing proudly beside Baroness Thatcher should send this message to David Cameron: ‘you know that Thatcherite legacy you’re so keen on trashing? Maybe time to think again.’

Every time I watch an England match, I cannot help wondering at the vacant looks on the faces of the players while the national anthem is being played.

What is wrong with these young men? Do they not know the words to their own anthem? It is especially galling when England play against another team whose members sing their hearts out while their anthem is being played. Nothing especially wrong with being quiet and respectful during the anthem, but that is not even the case with most of the English players. In fact, tonight, there was at least one English player chewing (gum, possibly) during the anthem. Such disrespect.

Can whoever is responsible for these young men not have a word with them? Such little things matter.

(As to the match itself, don’t ask me. I switched channels when the commentators reverted to their customary smug mode. It is for this reason that I normally watch England matches with the sound muted.)