The reaction to the Labour leader’s conference speech is one of the strangest sights I have seen in many years. Granted that much of the public think Miliband a geek, and that his tight election made him a leader with precious little legitimacy, but the contempt that greeted his unexceptional remarks remains extraordinary. In a moderate manner, Miliband told a truth about Britain.
October 3, 2011
October 2, 2011
Ignoring Rupert
There is just one proper subject for a public inquiry: the cashless corruption Rupert Murdoch perfected. He did not behave like a common criminal. Instead of giving the ruling party money to spend on political propaganda and demanding business favours in return, Murdoch instructed his editors to provide propaganda free of charge. No money changed hands. But the briber still received business favours and the bribed politicians still got puff pieces. Now the hacking racket has been exposed, we need an inquiry to ask if the law should make it an offence for media conglomerates to use threats and inducements to enrich themselves.
One only has to raise the question to know why David Cameron does not want it answered. A genuine inquiry would investigate how quickly and comprehensively he and Jeremy Hunt prostituted their government. It would look at whether their appointment of a former News of the World editor to the prime minister’s office gave the police the impression that they should please the government’s friends. A competent inquiry would then go back through the sweetheart deals between Murdoch and Britain’s rulers that began with the Broadcasting Act 1990.
No one can hold today’s prime minister and culture secretary liable for the privileges Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair granted Murdoch. But the Conservatives would no longer be News Corporation’s friends if they accepted a public inquiry’s recommendation to withdraw Sky’s privileges. News Corporation still controls three national newspapers and Britain’s richest television station. I can assure you that Messrs Cameron and Hunt have not forgotten that and want to keep Murdoch “on side”.
So instead of allowing an inquiry that might harm them, the Conservatives are diverting attention and threatening more restrictions on free speech. The inquiry they have established under Lord Justice Leveson is a minor scandal in itself. “We will focus primarily on the relationship between the press and the public and the related issue of press regulation,” Leveson declares. Not, I hope you notice, the specific relationship between ministers and News Corporation, or on the specific charges now heading to the courts, but on the dangerously nebulous subject of press freedom.
September 30, 2011
Media Myopia
I thought as I left the court that a young and unscrupulous journalist, able to knock out 1,000 words on time and to length, needed to make just one choice before beginning a career as a columnist. If he wanted to work on a right-wing paper, he would develop an aversion to immigrants, trade unions, political correctness, theories of global warming and all public sector workers except members of the armed forces. He would defend free enterprise but still support the bailout of bankers at public expense and hope no one noticed the contradiction. If he wanted a career on a left-wing title, he would develop an aversion to all businessmen except pop stars, Jews (or “Zionists” as he would soon learn to call them), the police, and all members of the upper and upper-middle class apart from the great and the good of the public sector. He would say that he opposed homophobia, racism and misogyny but still make excuses for radical Islam and hope that no one noticed the contradiction.
September 27, 2011
Chris Patten: A Big Disappointment All Round
Chris Patten has held almost every great and good job the great and the good can offer: Governor of Hong Kong, Companion of Honour, European Commissioner, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Chairman of the BBC Trust. Only his parents’ decision to send him to a Catholic church will prevent him becoming Archbishop of Canterbury and winning the game of establishment bingo with a full house.
September 25, 2011
The IRA and Europe’s Ghosts
All the countries the euro crisis is ravaging can recall a time of dictatorial rule and revolutionary violence. Franco’s fascistic regime clung on until 1975, late in the day even by the lax standards of the 20th century. Portugal’s 1974 revolution against the Salazar dictatorship was a glorious moment of civil disobedience, but the carnage the revolution accelerated in the old Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola and East Timor continued for decades. Assassination attempts and naval mutinies preceded Greece’s revolution against the military junta in 1974 and terrorist groups carried on operating in Greece into the 21st century, as they did in Spain.
Europe, that soft, safe continent of moderate politicians, pacific generals, meticulous bureaucrats, liberal judges and protected workers, is a recent invention. One should not expect it to contain its old demons after the collapse of its hopes.
The first example of the “new politics” emerging from the wreckage of the eurozone is the campaign for the Irish presidency by Martin McGuinness, the butcher’s boy who became head of the IRA‘s northern command.
September 19, 2011
Novelists can be shits (and may be the better for it)
The surprise is that anyone is surprised that Grass’s views on politics are idiotic or shocked when le Carré behaves like a bastard. The lives of some novelists are moral examples, but if all of them were angels, we would have nothing but morality tales. A few artists might make good politicians. But most are no more “unacknowledged legislators,” than most legislators are unacknowledged artists.
September 18, 2011
The treachery of Julian Assange
You did not have to listen for too long to Julian Assange‘s half-educated condemnations of the American “military-industrial complex” to know that he was aching to betray better and braver people than he could ever be.
September 15, 2011
Review: Howard Jacobson
Readers who buy Howard Jacobson because the press tells them that he is “the first comic writer to win the Booker” are likely to be confused. Not disappointed – I cannot imagine anyone regretting reading him – but faintly baffled by the labels journalists paste on authors.
September 15, 2011
Respect versus tolerance
Speech to the National Secular Society on why those who demand respect for religion are the enemies of religious tolerance
Hear it here
September 15, 2011
Labour’s wretched lack of backbone over banks
Democracy’s advantage over other systems of government is meant to be that electorates can throw out incompetent leaders who do not respond to changing times. Knowing this, governments realise that they cannot let abuses of power continue. They must reform or perish.
Since the crash of 2008, British democracy has failed. Most of the political class and a large section of the public responded to a shock as great as the 9/11 attacks by carrying on as if nothing had happened. The effort to pretend that we can return to where we once were has been huge. But the strains of keeping up appearances are starting to show. Ideologies that once seemed dominant are now looking threadbare and ridiculous.
Nick Cohen
