Leaders' Question Time: Who Won?

The pundits muttered dismissively about YouGov's shock poll putting the Tories just three points ahead of Labour, suggesting the election's outcome is edging toward a hung parliament. Reportedly, Jim Messina, the Conservatives' stat whizz on loan from the liberal heroes at Team Obama threw his head back and laughed. Just like someone else we know. And then today Ipsos Mori dropped their bomb: Tories 45%, Labour 40%. The unweighted poll (i.e. not controlling for differentiated turn out) actually puts Labour three points ahead. I can feel hope cloying its way into my heart.

This is no substitute for analysis, however. Cool heads are essential if the newly mobilised aren't to suffer disillusionment and despair if, after everything, the polls are proven wrong and Labour does worse than now expected. On this score, there are two tallies we need to keep an eye on: perceived economic competence and leader ratings. Since these questions have been asked, no party has won a general election who are behind on both. And, unfortunately, Labour is. That said the volatility of politics are proving Theresa May's undoing as her ratings plummet and Jeremy Corbyn's rocket upward. It is quite possible over the weekend the sliver of a gap between them vanishes and starts opening up on the other side. This. Election. Is. Killing. Me.

After an excruciating week for May that saw her nearly crumble in front of a below-par Jeremy Paxman, refuse to take part in the leaders' debate and sent a grieving Amber Rudd in her place, turn down Woman's Hour, rule out any local radio interviews for the remainder of the campaign, and now reeling under the news that the CPS are charging Craig McKinley, his South Thanet agent, and "campaign specialist" Marion Little for alleged electoral expense fraud, May had to really pull it out the bag for tonight's Question Time special. For his part, Jeremy's insurgency is assuming juggernautish properties. Unlike May, he's not under siege from a collapsing campaign nor a simmering rebellion, and a strong and stable performance in front of the Question Time audience would be the icing on the cake for a brilliant week. Who remembers Tuesday's stumble in the Radio 4 studio now?

May came first and needed to knock it out of the park. The first thing to remember is while May isn't comfortable in front of the public, tonight was her 24th appearance on Question Time. If she's no good with that format now, she never will be. And, overall, I think she came off alright. There were no stunning rhetorical flourishes, nor were there any big stumbles. It was competent enough - not polished, plenty vague, but little to frighten away the already committed Tory voter. The problem, however, is with the large numbers of undecideds out there. Here we have someone hyped by the media as the supreme politician, as a grown up versus the seat-of-the-pants juvenilia of Dave and Osborne. Coming across well matters. Relatable matters. Warmth matters. And she just can't do it. Asked about the public sector pay freeze for nurses, there was little sense of sympathy. Confronted by a woman with mental health difficulties and was dragged through a work capability assessment, there was no compassion in her response - just a technocrat's answer. As a rule, electorates are okay with people who don't connect as long as they understand ordinary people's problems, and unfortunately for May she tanks this every time.

Jeremy Corbyn on the other hand had a much better time of it - for the most part. He was more relaxed, more assured in his answers, more interested in listening to what people had to say. On every indicator, he as the anti-May. He showed command of his brief and was able to talk in detail about policy areas, which, considering May is the incumbent and offered vagueness and generality, is a key difference between the two and reflects terribly on the PM. This was especially the case on Brexit - May wouldn't be drawn on no deal, while Jeremy talked about the need to protect jobs and building a more equal society. Brexit means Brexit for May, for Corbyn Brexit means the fight for more and better jobs, and a more pleasant, safer, fairer Britain. A key difference.

Jeremy was doing extremely well until we came to Trident and nuclear weapons. He answered the points on Trident and the first use of nuclear weapons sensibly, on the importance of talking and diplomacy to ever avoid a situation where atomic warfare is a possibility, but some in the Tory third of the audience were determined to get blood and kept asking him whether he'd press the button. He wobbled and didn't offer a clear answer. There are various ways he could have answered it without a straight yes or no, like keeping all options open, doing whatever it takes to defend the country, listening to what the military experts say, and what not. But the audience member who came in after to attack the others who were gleefully criticising Corbyn for refusing to aggressively incinerate millions of people just about spared his blushes. However, the job was done and the press have got their meat for the weekend. Which, to be honest, is hardly news. Later on the IRA came back up and this presented him no difficulties whatsoever, revealing that he had defended Ian Paisley when moves were afoot to bar him from Westminster on the grounds that all voices needed to be party to a peace process, not just the ones you agree with. In all a good performance, sans the handling of the nuclear issue.

Who won? As a Labour supporter I'm obviously going to say Corbyn. But where it counted - on character, on giving a vision, on policy detail he was much better, clearer, and more serious than the Prime Minister. Nukes presented him a problem but his attitude is already baked into nearly everyone's choice, though that won't stop the press from using it to mobilise the Tory vote and try and snatch back some of the volatile ex-kippers that are slipping toward Labour. But even if he gave a totally flat performance, he still would have won. Theresa May strikes as an unsympathetic figure, and she needed something special tonight to try and put her crisis-ridden campaign back on course. She wasn't able to do that. Labour goes into the final weekend of campaigning with the wind in its sails. All the Tories have is scaremongering. It worked in 2015, will it work now? Or can Labour confound all the sage expectations - including my own - and deliver the biggest, most surprising, and sweetest victory in our party's history?

On the BBC Election Debate

The very moment Jeremy Corbyn confirmed he would be attending this evening's BBC Election Debate in Cambridge, Theresa May lost the night. Whether the last day of May will, um, prove to be the end of May remains to be seen. Yet to hide from a debate and sending a subordinate to do it for you is a catastrophic mistake, especially as your pitch is all about your super-duper leadership. I hope it will erode her strong and stable branding among those kippers, normally-Labour-but people, and soft Tories set on giving "her team" a punt. And so, straight away, without Amber Rudd uttering a single word on her boss's behalf, the Prime Minister is wounded and her party is down on points. Only something exceptional could have won it for them.

Nevertheless, this debate was not without risk for the Labour leader. In 2015 when Ed Miliband appeared alongside the leaders of the other parties, minus Dave, it arguably fed into the coalition of chaos narrative the Tories ran with deadly effect. Having Rudd turn up loses that advantage - but there were still two possible difficulties Jeremy had to avoid during the debate. The first was Rudd herself. Unlike May, Rudd appears to relish these kinds of events and by sending her along the Tories thought Labour would put Diane Abbott up - in fact, she was daft enough to say so herself. Nevertheless, Rudd is a shouty, aggressive debater who goes straight in for character attacks. The way she filleted Boris Johnson at last year's referendum debate gave us an idea of what might have been in store. The second problem is how the tri-force of the Greens, SNP, and Plaid will play (seriously, why even is UKIP there?). Rudd was bound to talk up the possibility of coalition, so did Caroline Lucas, Angus Robertson, and Leanne Wood oblige the Tories and challenge Jeremy to take them up on it? Again, Nicola Sturgeon's coalition gambit in the 2015 debates inadvertently helped Dave get his message across. Similar talk hasn't bedeviled Jeremy anywhere near to the same extent, so you had to hope he had something prepared on this.

With those dangers in mind, the objective for Jeremy tonight was to squeeze the non-Tory vote as much as possible and start making inroads into the Conservatives' electoral coalition. Inducing a few cracks in it so the support starts trickling away from May and towards the smaller parties (or suppressing a despairing Tory vote) is, at this juncture, helpful.

In the end, there was no need to be worried. It was a scrappy debate as voices were raised and they tried drowning one another out. It meant Rudd's hyper aggression didn't materialise and her attacks on Labour barely registered either in the studio or the audience. This played to Dave's advantage in 2015 because he was able to assume the mantle of outsider, as someone picked on by the nasty SNP and the others. Rudd, on this occasion, wasn't able to strike the underdog pose. Having your boss arrogantly refusing to take responsibility was always going to do that. She had a go with the coalition of chaos nonsense but it fell flat. Dave succeeded because in making it about leadership he did at least turn up to one debate, and was able to let his opponents do the rest for him. This time there wasn't too much bickering between the anti-Tory parties. Leanne Wood laid a glove on Jeremy over Labour's record in Wales and its record in voting down progressive initiatives brought to the Assembly, but that was as far as it went. Angus Robertson wisely toned down the Scottish independence angle, even to the exclusion of mentioning another referendum, thereby denying the Tories a helpful attack angle and irritating English voters who, well, find it very irritating.

What would the take homes be? I think the small parties will all be pleased with their performance. Even Nuttall turned in a pitch his dwindling band of kippers would find cheer in, even if he was at one point reduced to shouting "What about Hamas?". Tim Farron had a good night with some of the best lines, such as "Where is Theresa May tonight? She might be outside your house, sizing it up to pay for social care." And I think the standout performances came from Caroline Lucas and Robertson - the latter for her enthusiasm but effectively targeted passion, the latter for his forensic dismemberment of the Tory record.

The ones that mattered were, of course, Jeremy's and Rudd's. As I said, Rudd was drowned out and when she was given space to speak her attacks were blunted and rendered ritualistic by weeks of robotic repetition without anything positive to offer. How would it have played among the undecided at home? It's unlikely to have stiffened the resolve of voters thinking of voting Tory. Perhaps Rudd wasn't on form, she is recently bereaved after all, which makes May's decision to send her along not just cowardly, but heartless too. Likewise, while the format didn't allow Jeremy to be as effective as his Paxo grilling, it was strong and stable, to use that phrase again. He got in attacks on food banks and homelessness, education, and was given opportunity to set out Labour's stall on terrorism and security. There were no wobbles, no difficulties, no sign of the alleged weakness attributed him by others. He set out and did what he needed to.

Will this debate have a material effect on the election outcome? If it does, it will impact most on the Tories. To have all the party leaders attack May for being frit is sure to put doubt in some minds. Cracking her coalition is the game, and at this stage every vote that drains away from the Tories makes the prospect of an overall majority, let alone a landslide, recede into the distance. No clear winners then, but one very obvious loser.

May vs Corbyn: The Verdict

It's a misnomer to describe this as May vs Corbyn seeing as it's not a head-to-head debate, but it is true that tonight's Battle for Downing Street could settle the question of who-to-vote-for for millions of undecided people. As anyone who's been out canvassing in this campaign will tell you, there are plenty of them about. For each leader their encounter with Paxman relates to their campaigns differently. For Theresa May, whose strategy and messaging has collapsed, it's about turning round the Tory party's fortunes. They still command leads in the polls but have lost ground thanks to three things: the dementia tax, a rubbish, arrogant campaign, and the strong campaign Labour has run. While for May tonight was about salvaging a victory from the mess, for Jeremy Corbyn it has to be on building on Labour's dynamism and carry the poll surge upwards. Success for either leader can be measured by how convincingly May depicts Labour as a security risk, and how Corbyn paints the Tories as a risk to self-security. Paxman's job, meanwhile, was to get under their skin and show up the contradictions and problems of both.

How did it go?

Like last time, each 45 minute slot was broken into two parts - questions from the audience (one third Tory, one third Labour, one third undecided), and the second half a grilling from Paxman. Corbyn went first and took questions on the IRA and nuclear weapons - following a path firmly trod by a right wing media and a government increasingly desperate to weaponise any old rope against him. Unexpectedly, he received applause for setting out Labour's position on immigration (which subordinates numbers to perceived economic necessity) when, previously, this has was regarded a major Achilles Heel. He took a question from an alleged former Labour supporter who owned a small business and was worried about a rise in corporation tax, plans to introduce VAT charges to his children's school fees, and zero hour contracts. Very sensibly Corbyn hit the one nationist high road to talk about how spreading fairness was in everyone's interests, and that businesses like his would benefit from operating in a more benign environment. Not the class struggle Trot response many Tory supporters, and no doubt the questioner himself was hoping for. Also asked on his fitness to lead, he replied that telling people what to do isn't a sign of leadership - listening is. As he put it, "You should never be so high and mighty that you can't listen to someone else and learn something".

It was a very strong performance that attracted praise from across the commentariat, including unlikely plaudits from your Dan Hodges and Nigel Farages. We then moved into the grilling from Paxman and, to be honest, Corbyn looked just as unruffled as he was during the first half. Some frustration did get the better of him as Paxo kept jumping in without giving him chance to answer a question. And what questions. Considering this man used to be regarded as Britain's best political interviewer, he wasn't on form tonight. Totally misunderstanding how Labour's manifesto is put together and having no clue about our traditions of collective discipline made him look bad and ill-tempered. You knew Paxo was in a sticky wicket when he was berating Corbyn for not getting the abolition of the monarchy and scrapping Trident into the manifesto. Bizarre. He then reverted to IRA/Hamas and state security matters. Corbyn is so practiced now at handling these sorts of questions that an interviewer of Paxo's experience should perhaps have focused on other things instead. Nevertheless, Corbyn escaped unscathed without a single glove landing. A commanding performance. Strong and stable, you might say.

We all know Theresa May avoids the public like a vampire recoils from garlic, so in many ways she approached this as an unknown quantity for millions of people. And how did she do? With the audience she took questions on police numbers, the NHS, and the dementia tax. While some were hoping for a collapse that didn't happen, but her approach wasn't relaxed either. It was classical Westminster: you take the question and make a real meal of it, refusing to answer and covering up gaping chasms with vague generalisations and padding in the hope of crowding further questions out. I didn't find it convincing, but then I know what to look for. The method aims to convey the impression that the speaker knows what they're talking about and draw any controversial sting from it. Here May performed competently enough, though a quick aside on the "uncosted" Labour manifesto drew snorts of derision and mocking laughter from the audience.

How did she do with Paxo? Remarkably, or not considering he is a self-confessed one nation Tory, the question style was a relaxed but occasionally awkward chat. Less politics, more the analyst's couch. There were next to no interruptions and May was allowed to waffle on as she pleased. However, she almost came unstuck at this more sedate pace. She was troubled by the dementia tax, repeating her pat answers of the last week. She was taken to task for going back on her word over calling the general election and was challenged over Brexit. As Paxo had it, the people in Brussels would look at Theresa May and see "a blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire". Unfortunately, his loyalties got the better of going for the jugular and she was given the space to row back and waffle some more. In sum, she didn't perform badly but almost came undone under the gentlest of pressures. Not a good look.

While it didn't have any material outcome on the 2015 election, The Battle for Number 10 was part of the theatre of that campaign. David Cameron was slippery and slick, yet mostly able to look the part - which was his sole discernible talent as Prime Minister. And Ed Miliband came over as passionate but a little bit awkward. Remember "hell yeah I'm tough enough"? It confirmed opinions already baked into voters' decisions. Tonight? Most people have an opinion about Corbyn, for good or ill, thanks to the blanket coverage he's received for nearly two years. And after his exceptional performance, some may have had their expectations confounded. May on the other hand can give good speech at set piece events without questions, but did she look like someone who can cope with criticisms? Did she look like someone competent enough to oversee the Brexit negotiations? To Labour people and others who follow such things, obviously not. It is to be hoped that after tonight many millions more have drawn a similar conclusion.

Explaining Laura Kuenssberg's Bias

There's a headline. It's from the BBC, written by no less a figure than the corporation's chief political editor. Not something up to the standards expected, you might say. As readers know, I tend not to moan much about the recipient of the licence fee. As a general rule, its news coverage is much better than most and where it fails in impartiality, it can make up in balance - particularly with regard to its flagship current affairs programme, Question Time. But there have been plenty of Labour people outraged by the behaviour of senior BBC journalists of late. Here are some much-shared and criticised examples.

Not exactly fair and not exactly balanced, to borrow the strap line of the Murdoch-owned bilge channel. And into this litany of bias comes Laura Kuenssberg's blog on Labour's manifesto. Just look at the state of the headline: "Labour manifesto vision: More spending, more tax, more borrowing". Let's be generous here, that is more or less a factually accurate statement. But this is politics. Kuenssberg's been in the game (at the top of the game) for long enough to know that nothing is neutral in politics, and she knows well enough that it's quite possible to frame and slant reports in particular ways that favour certain parties over others without explicitly saying "vote Tory", or whatever.

For the last seven years 'more spending, more tax, more borrowing' has been repeated ad nauseum as an attack line by the Tories. The spending line specifically is a charge that the Tories and their friends in the press have used since 1979. Kuenssberg knows this, she isn't stupid. And it's outrageous.

What's going on then? As we have seen before, the BBC is a biased institution: it tilts towards the political establishment. Since Jeremy Corbyn took the leadership of the Labour Party, it, like the rest of official politics and the state, have looked on in a mixture of fascination and horror, almost as if Labour was plotting an insurrection followed by full sovietisation. Not a mild programme of social democracy that would move Britain more in the direction of noted communist power, the Federal Republic of Germany. In the avalanche of destabilisation and attacks on Labour and its leader and the subsequent dumbing down of debate, the BBC has played its part with alacrity.

Also, it finds itself in a particular pickle. Since 2003 and the fall out from the dodgy dossier and the death of weapons expert David Kelly, the BBC has even more diligently bowed the knee to sitting governments. The powers that be want to retain the Royal Charter and therefore carry on as a going concern, and this sentiment is shared across all senior staff, including those in front of the camera. In the context of this general election in which the Tories are widely expected to win, the BBC is playing supplicant and not giving them anywhere near as hard a time as Labour. They hope the Tories will leave the corporation well alone. This is no conspiracy, nor will you find documents instructing senior reporters to go easy, but it's a structure of feeling working its way through what they do and say.

Is Laura Kuenssberg a Tory then? Who knows for certain but she, like many others, know which side their bread is buttered on.

Eurovision 2017 Preview

We may be bidding farewell to the European Union, but thankfully Britain remains a fully committed to the one supranational body that matters: the European Broadcasting Union. And so, with two weeks to go, it's time for our annual trudge through the highlights of this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Remember, I don't do predictions any more. Especially as Theresa May has gone and done one all over my there-won't-be-a-general-election-in-2017 forecast. Arrgh.

Enough ado, bring on the musics.

To get it out of the way and fly the flag, here's what we're sending to the contest:



"Together we'll dance through this storm" sings Lucie Jones. A message voicing our Brexiting malaise? Penned by previous Eurovision winner, Emmelie de Forest, it's alright. Forgettable but alright. Still, I don't think it's likely to trouble the other competitors and the UK will emerge as an also-ran, again. Something our country is going to have to get used to after 2019.

Patriotic service performed, who's next?

Israel had a very good Eurovision last year. Hovi Star's Made of Stars was easily their best entry in the contest since Dana International cleaned up back in the dim and distant. 2017's doesn't match the heights of either, but it's passable:



IMRI's ditty should give full credit to the Israeli tourist board. It's a nice, summery number with a tropical vibe. Definitely not a show beater but I Feel Alive should get through the heats and perform creditably in the competition. It will do better than our entry.

Next up is Macedonia's entry. Dance Alone by Jana Burčeska is a clubby number haunted by melancholy, which is just how I like it. Definitely one of the few standout tracks from this year's field:



What's next? Let's have us a bit of Iceland:



Going by the number of YouTube views, Svala's Paper is an interesting piece. Combining light EBM sensibilities with pop-friendly melodies, it's probably going to get overlooked and not make it through the heats. Interesting doesn't necessarily mean successful.

Okay, here's the moment you've been waiting for. Who's my pick? Again, perhaps an obscure choice but it definitely does not deserve to be. My favourite is ...



The Montenegran team know the Eurovision audience! What can you say? If Slavko Kalezić takes to the stage in black pants and nothing else, he's going to run away with it. And the braid. The braid. Fantastic. As readers know, it's all about the music in the end and Space is simply brilliant. A bit house, a bit 90s boy band, nonsense lyrics, once the wider Eurovision public get a taste surely love - and points - will come Montenegro's way.

Those are my picks for 2017. Have any caught your eye?

Marine Le Pen on Andrew Marr

When it comes to fascists and the far right, giving them air time is a decision that should not be made lightly. If they are to appear, they should be rigorously challenged and forced to defend themselves. Anything less just gives them an opportunity to push their propaganda. When I learned that Andrew Marr was to be interviewing the French National Front leader, Marine Le Pen this Remembrance Sunday, I thought the BBC were having a laugh. It was obvious this encounter was not going to be a grilling. If you want to drag someone over the coals, you send for Jeremy Paxman or Andrew Neil. Marr, never known for his combative interviewing style, treated the French fascist leader as one indulges a pet tamagotchi.

It was a master class in poor interviewing. Not only did her lies go unchallenged, Marr also gave Le Pen free reign to push her views in the gently, gently, tones that have won her party a large following. On multiculturalism, she said that in the English-speaking countries, fundamentalist Islam is advancing. Demonstrably untrue. On the European Union, her Europe of free nations stands opposed to the "totalitarian" EU - more rubbish. Asked about Russia, Le Pen expressed her admiration for Vladimir Putin's model of "reasoned protectionism". You know, the sort of "reason" that allows for the murder of journalists and persecution of LGBT Russians. Not once did Marr step in to challenge these bullshit views as Le Pen looked relaxed and, at times, appeared to be enjoying herself.

Asked about Muslims in France and whether they have anything to fear from a FN presidency, which looks more likely thanks to Trump's victory, she replied "we're not going to welcome any more people. We're full up." A decent journalist might have snapped back that this wasn't the question that was asked. Going on, she said the FN were not bothered about people's religions, as long as they abided by secular French codes and values. This would be the same Le Pen who compared public prayers by Muslims to the Nazi occupation of France, and said that the increasing "Islamisation" of France was putting "civilisation" at risk. Utter drivel.

And then Marr made the misstep of allowing her to emphasise the generational break between her FN, and the more openly authoritarian and classically fascist FN of her father. Along with claiming that her party isn't racist (a claim easy enough to rebut had Marr bothered doing the most cursory homework), she was allowed to burnish her own "anti-fascism" by calling the Holocaust - the historic culmination of Europe's fascist experience - the central feature of the Second World War. Famously, Jean-Marie Le Pen referred to it as a detail.

What then is the point in all this, apart from showing the dismal standard of Marr's journalism? I'm not quite sure the BBC know either, though it does smack of the liberal naivete you can often find in its circles. "That Marine Le Pen is interesting and controversial, let's have her on." The worrying thing, however, is the actual content of the interview. Prattling on to her heart's content, there was very little, if anything, that hasn't already spilled forth from the mouths of UKIP and right wing Tory politicians. Nothing Le Pen said hasn't already found itself expressed - often, more stridently - in editorials and hatchet jobs. Our politics have become so poisoned that her small-minded anti-Islam, anti-foreigner, anti-EU scapegoating idiocies don't seem all that horrifying any more. And thanks to Andrew Marr, he's just helped normalise the reception Le Pen and her hate-fuelled mob can expect in Britain.

Hitler: The Rise and Fall

Broadcast on More4 these last few weeks is the definitive documentary about the Nazi leader. Bear in mind those are their words, not mine. Like most pieces that try and unpick Adolf Hitler, this claims to get at the man behind the monster by building on insights dredged up by decades of scholarship. And yet, somehow, despite there being virtually nothing that hasn't been said or written about Hitler, TV documentaries always miss the mark. Rather than challenge the myth that he was a political titan in a field of mediocrities, they tend to reconfirm it. In no sense is he analysed in his context, as the head of a social movement and, as such, he gets off as one of history's great (but damned) men. In this respect, I'm afraid to say Rise and Fall is no different.

Despite drawing on academics and experts, Rise and Fall's obvious shortcoming concerns Hitler's rise to power. Obvious, because it is repeated time and again. As even my cat knows, after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch Hitler came to the conclusion that (relatively) peaceful and constitutional campaigning was the way forward for the fledgling Nazi movement. Violence against opponents was ever present, but this took place alongside the work of contesting elections, kissing babies, setting up Nazi social clubs, and so on. After his release from Landsberg prison, Hitler set about reorganising the Nazis and polishing up his image as a dynamic politician. The conventional narrative, which Rise and Fall parrots, is that he got nowhere - despite the celebrity Hitler's trial afforded him - until the Depression came knocking and Germany's economy nosedived. Once this happened, Hitler's assumption of power was more or less guaranteed.

As anyone who imbibed their inter-war history from the teet of Trotskyism knows, matters were more complex. In histories of the time, backed up by Trotsky's excellent contemporary analyses of the rise of Nazism, we were told that Hitler was the fault of Joe Stalin and his minions in the German Communist Party (KPD). The most powerful and well-organised party in the Communist International outside of the USSR, with the onset of economic crisis the official Comintern line declared that a new period in politics had opened up in which revolution was imminent. The time now was to take the offensive and declare war on all capitalist parties, and this included (and especially targeted) the mainstream social democratic and labour parties. In Britain's case, where the tiny CPGB's positioning vis a vis the Labour Party merely reinforced their stillborn status, in Germany the effects were far more serious. Trotsky had rightly identified that the Nazis presented the labour movement a mortal threat, and for that reason the KPD and Social Democrats (SPD) should make common cause to crush the Nazis on the streets and drive them out of politics. They certainly had the combined social weight and large enough militias to do so. And yet, time and again, opportunities for unity were passed up as the KPD pursued the "class against class" line. Rather than seeing the SPD as potential allies, they were "social fascists" to be smashed alongside the real fascists. The fact Stalin's Comintern carried on with this policy to the mutual ruination of German communism and social democracy underlined its bankruptcy and the need for a new revolutionary centre, as far as Trotsky was concerned.

While this was true, Trotsky is a touch guilty of over egging the pudding. Yes, the main enemies were the Nazis, but the KPD didn't pursue the class against class line just because Moscow told them to. The KPD was mainly a young party, but it contained plenty of activists who were around when the Social Democrats in government used proto-fascist militias to murder Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the party's outstanding early leaders. It was the SPD that colluded with the army against the communist government in Bavaria, and summarily executed its key cadre when the Munich soviet collapsed. While history does not excuse the communist failure to unite against the Nazis, it helps explain why many party members swallowed the social fascist line. Meanwhile, the SPD weren't especially keen on forging an alliance against the Nazis with the revolutionary left either - what was taking place on Germany's streets were secondary to its constitutional responsibility toward the republic it had created, and manoeuvring with bourgeois parties to keep the possibility of mainstream coalition government open.

The Nazis were fortunate to face a divided labour movement. By the time they were in government and used the emergency powers contrived by Hitler in the wake of the Reichstag Fire, they were able to roll over both parties without so much as a shot fired. This outcome, however, was not predetermined. Politics are always fluid, and because of the repeated blunders in the face of the Nazi threat Germany succumbed to fascism.

Needless to say, this opportunity to defeat the Nazis was passed over in favour of a narrative of a smooth assumption of power. But the second point, which rarely warrants a mention, is that by the time Hitler was invited to form a government, his party was past its electoral peak. In the July 1932 general election, the Nazis became the biggest party in the Reichstag with 37% of the popular vote (13,750,000 votes) and 280 seats. Come the November election, they lost two million votes and 34 seats. Rise nevertheless portrayed Hindenburg's invitation to Hitler as a natural outcome of an insurgent Nazi party. In fact, by this time Germany was over the worst of the economic crisis and clearly, all it took was a few months for former Nazi voters to get fed up of Hitler's shenanigans and posturing. It was the play of bourgeois coalition politics that elevated the Nazis to the level it could cut liberal democracy's throat. The options were there for yet another bourgeois/SPD coalition, and yet at this late stage the establishment feared the KPD more. In those final free elections it rose to 100 seats and almost six million votes while the SPD's support was spiralling downward. Again, Hitler's rise was not inevitable.

Unfortunately, by skirting over these important historical details they reinforce the Führer myth. As established scholarship has asserted time and again, Hitler was an ignorant blowhard that rendered him entirely inflexible, and was a man consumed by infantile fantasies fed by cowboy novels and Wagnerian opera. He had a talent for rabble rousing, a flare for marketing, and a cunning that could sniff out weakness in others. None of these attributes are signs of genius: they are banal character traits shared by tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. In his rise to power, what is striking is less an exercise of preternatural talents but exceptional luck. Luck that his opponents underestimated the Nazi movement, despite the living example of Fascist Italy, luck that the labour movement was consumed by its own civil war, and luck that the game of government formation made the Nazis an invitation at the moment their support had started to plunge. If you're looking for the last word on this topic, Hitler: The Rise and Fall isn't it.

Notes on Naked Attraction

We've had occasion to discuss willies and fannies on this blog, so it was only a matter of time before a programme came along and did the same. Naturally, it had to be ever-so-edgy Channel 4, and the presenter couldn't be anyone but their veteran of in-house sex shows, Anna Richardson. Naked Attraction is a dating show and works like this. The contestant is surrounded by six booths which gradually reveal the person inside. The twist is the reveal works from the bottom up, so we see their bits 'n' bobs before seeing their face and hearing them speak. Once the bodies are whittled down to two, the contestant gets their kit off so the viewers can check their naked bods out too. S/he then makes her pick and off on a date they go. It's enough to make Kenneth Williams blow a gasket.

What to make of it then? Some thoughts:

1. It's very of the moment, isn't it? C4 are always the terrestrial telly channel happiest displaying people in their birthday suits, though BBC2 gave them a run for their money in the early 90s. Naked Attraction wouldn't be happening if the channel hadn't already blazed a trail with reality TV. From the 'classical' phase of Big Brother (series 1-6 IMO) and mutating into all sorts of fly-on-the-walls and "real life" TV since, these shows laid bare the characters of real people who, for whatever reason, were fame hungry enough to put themselves in front of the cameras. A certain kind of nakedness has therefore been entertainment currency for the best part of two decades. Then just as interest in Big Brother was winding down, C4 moved into a wave of sex education programming that perhaps, for the first time on British TV, showed extreme close ups of genitalia. This was expanded on with varying degrees of gross through Embarrassing Bodies, which sometimes featured horrible ailments afflicting the nether regions. But Naked's immediate antecedent is the notorious 2013 Danish show, Blachman. Dubbed by the Daily Mail of all papers as "the most sexist show ever", it involved the titular host (imagine Toby Young as an X-Factor judge) sharing his sofa with a male guest and critiquing the body of a woman standing naked before them. Naked does exactly the same, but the conversation with Anna is designed not to humiliate but explore what the contestant likes, be it a tight bum, abs, curvyness, chunky legs, etc.

2. The other key context is our ever-present friend, the internet. We've talked about the ubiquity of porn heaps aplenty on this blog, so for our purposes it's enough to note it's never been more readily accessible, had as huge an audience, and influenced mainstream culture to the extent it has and is doing now. You have sex, or at least the digitally mediated depiction of it always on tap. Against this backdrop is the simultaneous explosion in internet dating. Originally premised on matching profiles and getting to know someone a bit through the exchange of messages about, well, whatever, the epidemic of (unwanted) dick pics and the rise of your Grindrs and Tinders marked the mainstreaming of hooking up. Naked takes that further by putting what's hidden away up front, and letting what is usually up front come second. It's more or less the broadcast equivalent of ads in old contact magazines, but without the sleaze and with a dose of light hearted fun. Naked is the dating show perfect for this cultural moment.

3. Do we have to talk about surveillance of the body? I'm afraid so. Someone is always watching you, but it isn't Orwell's Big Brother. On the way from the train station to work, I must appear on at least a dozen CCTV cameras (and these are the ones I've been able to clock). This is pretty unremarkable. That's life in most towns and cities. Surveillance, however, is deeply rooted in Western cultures and has been so for quite some time. The monitoring of celebrity bodies in the press and magazines inculcates habits of surveillance among ourselves. They provide sets of standards by which our bodies are viewed and judged, whether we subscribe to or reject that criteria, and by our perceptions of others are filtered. Naked is very much within this tradition. The bodies on show in the debut episode were within a range of 19 to 32 years old, were multiracial, but did not differ significantly. They were slim, chiseled, and slightly full. They were waxed, shaved, trimmed. Tattooed and not, and, continuing with C4's disability acceptance theme, one of the guys had a prosthetic leg. The size of the willies, the shapes of the vag, the contours of the stomach, the tautness of the chest, the camera captures each almost as objects of contemplation and, perhaps for some viewers, yardsticks of comparison. Contestant comments were along the lines of too big, too curvy, and so on. The question is will the show stick with youthful bodies. are the over 35s allowed to get their kits off and display all? And it being Channel 4, will there be (please, no!) a celebrity version?

4. The reactions on the part of those not picked were quite funny and rather telling, if one accepts the brittle masculinity critique of contemporary displays of manliness. One guy who got rejected because his willy was too big moaned afterwards "But I'm a really nice person." Another bloke given the heave ho told the camera it was okay because he didn't fancy the contestant and she had ugly tattoos on her legs. And the last bloke, a 30-something Jesus look-a-like was almost in tears as he could believe his not being picked by the bi contestant because she chose two women over him. Others came away with a spring in their step. One young lad was gleeful that his backside was praised as a particularly fine specimen. Just don't show it off in a g-string, fella. How future contestants will respond to body critiques will be interesting, Are we going to see more affronted men act all arsey?

5. All this said, I thought Naked was going to be awful. It wasn't.

It's All Just a Little Bit of History Repeating ...

A guest post by Caroyln Morell

Despite the date having been written the wrong way round, the Stephen King televised serial, 11.22.63 was enjoyable bingeworthy TV (and is available on NOW TV for those, like me, who signed up for Game of Thrones and now has found fewer and fewer reasons for engaging in a real social life ever since). For the uninitiated, it follows the character of Jake Epping (played by James Franco) who travels back in time to 1960 in an attempt to (eventually) thwart the assassination of JFK on the famous day America lost its innocence.

Much has been written about the long shadow the assassination cast over American history; President Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline were young, handsome and vibrant, they mixed with celebrities and enjoyed a 60% approval rating among the general public - even when the country was increasingly divided over race. In fact, it’s amazing what a sprinkling of youthful, distracting stardust will do for any institution. Haven’t Kate, William and Harry done that for a monarchy that looked to be limping towards an inevitable demise as the century dawned?

Equally, much has been written about what would have happened if the murder had not taken place. Would the wholesale, innocent slaughter of young Americans and Vietnamese alike still have occurred? Would Martin Luther King have been dispatched in much the same way as Kennedy himself?

Of course, these questions are impossible to answer. Kennedy was an ardent Cold War warrior who sent "advisors" to Vietnam but who showed considerable political grit in helping bring America back from the brink of disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In most areas, he was a moderate who understood the power of public support for his policies - it’s hard to imagine him sending nearly sixty thousand young American men to their deaths. With regard to MLK, who knows? Courageous political leaders have always been bullet magnets but JFK’s assassination turned a confident, forward thinking country in to a pessimistic one, negative and unsure of its place in the world. In such an environment, murder always becomes a more established method of removal than the democratic process.

The TV show and the book on which it was based gives us a brief glimpse into a world where the fatal bullet(s) had not made their connection and Kennedy had survived. Perhaps as we would expect from the foremost popular horror writer of the twentieth century, it does not look good. After Jake saves the president in a dramatic confrontation which also sees the death of Lee Harvey Oswald (and his fiancée), Jake returns to 2015 and finds a nuclear wasteland. Scant details are given about how the disaster occurred but we discover that Kennedy was re-elected in 1964, to be followed by the crazed segregationist and persistent presidential nominee, George Wallace, who famously announced he would rather stand in the school house door than allow the integration of Alabama’s schools. We discover little more but Jake realises (perhaps like a far more famous literary character, Jay Gatsby), that trying to change the past will always have more serious unforeseen consequences that we can imagine.

It’s often said that history repeats itself and its here that we can easily make comparisons between Wallace’s unsuccessful, real campaign for President in 1968 and the current, (yes, it isn’t just a horrible dream) campaign by Donald Trump. Like Trump, Wallace excited the political interest of the white working class in a way that politicians rarely do. Like Trump he put forward policies that could never realistically be implemented (Bring on the wall!) and his campaign fundraisers were often accompanied by violent scenes. Wallace tirelessly described himself as the champion of the working man and woman despite never having lived amongst them and all the time serving the needs of the elite business circles he mixed in.

What will happen if Donald Trump (unlike George Wallace) actually gets elected? Very sadly, the events in San Bernardino and Orlando have made that more likely, with a frightened electorate unsure about when the next ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attack will occur. Maybe next time, the victims won’t be the members of a subculture offensive to some Muslims and some Republicans alike but ‘normal’ NRA members, or families visiting Disneyworld? Maybe a politician who will ban Muslims from entering the country is the one to plump for? Of course the problem that he has not addressed is that the Orlando shooter was born in the US, whilst others were radicalised via the Internet long after their arrival in the States as children. Will Trump begin by attempting to limit internet access for Muslim people "until we can be sure what's going on?" How long will it be before President Trump, unable to stop every ISIS dedicated terrorist attack establishes Islamic internment camps for both first and second generation immigrants, just as occurred with the Japanese after Pearl Harbour?

It’s entirely possible that such a divisive, polarising President as Trump could be assassinated but this time the trial would likely feature the possibility of a third, fourth, or fifth shooter alongside the one in the book depository - especially when it becomes evident that he is fundamentally unsuitable to run the world’s most influential country (for good or ill). But if this happens, I doubt that anyone in the future would want to slip through a wormhole to prevent it from happening. Whatever the future holds for American politics, it has to be better without Donald J Trump than one with him in it.

Debunking the Yeti

When I was much younger my mind was so open you could have driven a bus through it. Not that I was gullible (I always knew that was a word in the dictionary), but when it came to strange phenomena you could sign me up for every cranky belief going. UFO's and the conspiracies surrounding them were a favourite, but everything else - Loch Ness Monster, ghoulies and ghosties, supernaturally things, I was game for the lot. Now (much) older and wiser, a part of me is gratified whenever long-standing mysteries are debunked and sensible, scientific explanations are offered. And so Channel 4's Yeti: Myth, Man or Beast? with former kids' naturalist, Mark Evans ticked my boxes because, beyond all reasonable doubt, it appears the myth of the abominable snowman was finally, properly been put to bed.

We know the stories and the photos of suspect-looking footprints, and the folklore of Himalayan people. There are also the slightly suspect artefacts of fur, bones, and preserved body parts Tibetan and Nepalese villagers have waved in front of Western cameras for decades. So clearly there is something going on. The mythology of the Yeti is based on something, but what? Mark advanced two hypotheses: that a species of Himalayan bear is the not-so-fantastical basis of many sightings for mountain climbers and local people, or that there is a prehistoric species of human rattling around the roof of the world. Which is it to be? Well, a bit of both.

Much of the programme is spent driving to remote villages, wallowing in breathtaking panoramas, interrogating Tibetans about their local legends, and hanging around labs explaining DNA analysis. For added padding, Mark meets the celebrated mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who happened to have a brush with our elusive friend on an expedition 30 years ago. Having done a great deal of research, he came to conclusion his Yeti could be a hitherto undiscovered species of bear. Au contraire thinks Steve Berry, another professional climber. Presenting a photograph of a set of footprints in the snow, he was adamant only a bipedal creature could have produced them - though when Mark asks a villager, he straight out says they were snow leopard tracks. Darn the cats!

Getting to the nitty gritty, we get back DNA results for fur, bone, and a bit of a dessicated paw and, alas, genetics say no. The Yeti relics were either lowland black bears or highland brown bears. No new species of human then. And yet the alternative hypothesis isn't entirely dead. In a bit of a left field twist, Mark makes mention of recent findings in Denisova cave in southern Siberia. Between 2000 and 2014 archaeologists unearthed fossils pointing to a new species of prehistoric human, who apparently lived alongside Neanderthals and overlapped with modern humans. Mark hypothesised that tales of the Yeti might be folk memory stretching back to these encounters. This begs the obvious question: if that's the case, then why are the legends confined to the Himalaya and not the surrounding lowlands?

In previous analysis of Denisovan fossil DNA, Mark argued that they shared a specific mutation with modern humans living in the highlands: the EPAS1 gene. He explains how non-Himalayans adapt to altitude my producing more red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. However, over a long period this can lead to blood becoming more viscous and result in a number of potentially serious health problems. EPAS1 prevents blood from coagulating at altitude, which allows modern day Himalayans to live without any ill-effects. Mark suggests that this mutation could have been passed into the local population back in the dim and distant through interbreeding with Denisovans, and explains why the legends are particular to Himalayan peoples. This isn't entirely fanciful: there is evidence our ancestors did with Neanderthals. Taking DNA samples from Tibetan volunteers from a previous programme to a Californian lab, Mark was keen to pin down the date when such interbreeding could have taken place - and the result was stunning. The date range was between 40,000 and 7,000 years ago. Amazing.

Case closed then? Bears are responsible for contemporary sightings, and the interaction/interbreeding between our ancestors and Denisovans underpin the mythology. Seems pretty airtight. Yes, but one problem with Mark's "science bit". According to the work underpinning the identification of the EPAS1 gene, its emergence is far more recent in time. 3,000 years to be exact, and it's an independent evolutionary adaptation to a previously unhealthy environment - not the result of interbreeding. That the Denisovans had this too shouldn't be a surprise - nature is littered with examples of convergent and coincident evolution. For instance, combination of different genes had the same effects in the Andean and Ethiopian highlands too without the need of an exotic intervention from another species of human.

While systematic genetic analysis of these populations are ongoing, it's fair to conclude that bigfoot is dead, and has been for tens of thousands of years. Another mystery has been peeled back, and once more what was previously strange phenomena is something interesting but entirely explicable. As unreason spreads its wings and infects too many people with magical thinking, conspiratorial nonsense, and a desire to believe the weird and fantastical, Mark and Channel Four deserve praise for reminding its audience that we have the wherewithal to explain the world without the need for modern day pixies.

Secret Life of the Human Pups

Ah, the rich tapestry of human existence. Channel 4 has previously leered at dogging, and taken a voyeuristic peek behind the doors of exclusive sex parties. Polyamory, elderly sex workers, German brothels are also recent topics of late night tabloid telly. Who and what next? The commissioning editors must have thought long and hard before before coming up with ... human dogs.

No, I'm not talking about dogs who want to be human (doesn't that encompass all dogs anyway?). It's the other way round. Human beings, grown adults acting and performing like canines in dog suits. This is a subset of the Otherkin subculture, a group that identifies with mentally, spiritually, and where possible, physically with non-humans. These can be the fantastical, like elves, dragons, vampires, angels, and whatnot. Or the mundane, like cats, dolphins, and ... dogs. Most are happy to live out their identified species in groups of the like-minded where they can roleplay and suchlike. Puppy play, with its structure of handlers and pups grew out of the BDSM scene - hence why the dog outfits featured are basically fetish wear.

Secret Life of the Human Pups begins with Tom from Hertfordshire who, thanks to his doggy alter ego, Spot, won Mr Pup UK at a very alternative version of Crufts last year. This qualifies him for the Mr Puppy Europe competition in Antwerp to try and win the title of Europe's 'top dog'. As Spot, every spare moment is spent as a dog chasing puppy toys and curling up in his cage. As you might expect, this hasn't come without a personal cost. While she supports his alter-ego, Tom's ex-fiance Rachael makes it very clear throughout the programme that she would like their relationship to get back on track should he tire of being a dog. In the meantime, she's happy because he's happy, and he has no intention of putting his canine side to sleep.

The pups are one side of the subculture. The other are the puppy handlers. These are typically men (like the pups themselves) who provide opportunities for play, "training", and so on. The relationships sometimes are but not always conventionally intimate/romantic. The impression is given that the handlers are the ones that organise the subcultures. Kai, for instance, is in charge of online community pages (he estimates there are around 10,000 pups in the UK) and arranges the occasional meet up. Andy has six pups in his "pack" and says for him it's about creating a family, as well as being able to guide and shape young minds. He is also responsible for monthly meets. You are also left with the sense that despite its roots in the BDSM scene and reliance on fetish wear, the British community at least is not heavily sexualised. It has moved to centre on "head space", on concentrating on being and presenting as a dog.

This contrasts strongly with Europe. The footage from the Mr Puppy Europe competition in Antwerp leaves little doubt that this is a big part of the continental scene. From doors emblazoned with the legend "Warning, puppies in heat", to semi-naked blokes on leads, to raunchy competitive routines between pups and their handlers, Tom's/Spot's no-sex-please-we're-English routine perhaps cost him the top spot. But still, coming second he did better than the last 18 years of UK Eurovision entries.

In between there's a few snatched moments chatting with Chip, Bootbrush, Silver, Kaz, Pan Pup, and Dynamo, pups who provide little snippets about the life, and there are big recurring themes. The main one is putting aside anxiety and social convention and just being. As Chip put it, we have to be civilised and live within the boundaries of what it means to be human. As a pup he can throw that aside and become animalistic, but also be more sociable and playful without convention intervening. Likewise, Dynamo suggests that disproportionate numbers of pups have high pressure jobs and this is a form of escapism. This is hardly surprising. In fetish and S&M cultures, power play is central (indeed, a debate about sexual ethics once caused a Trot group to split). The appeal of being submissive is giving up control and subordinating one's body and sensations to the whims of another, and this can manifest itself in all kinds of ways. The Miss Whiplash trope beloved of 80s and 90s tabloid editors is the most conventional way of thinking about this, but it goes beyond someone getting tied to a post for a thrashing - for some it's a letting go of social mores and expectations and being governed by the pleasure over the reality principle, even if (depending on the context) that might involve some (eroticised) pain. The same kind of understanding applies here. Freud noted that we're born polymorphously perverse, as a bundle of desires that demand immediate satisfaction. As the infant matures into childhood and adulthood these instincts are tamed and we become beings capable of functioning in large, complex societies. Desires are repressed but constantly bubble up from the unconscious and can, in some cases, cause mental illness. Leaving aside debates about Freud, dogs are, if anything, four legged iterations of the id. They sleep when they want. They engorge themselves on food. They take pleasure in the most disgusting activities, and they're perhaps even more sex obsessed than their human masters. Framed in this way, as creatures that are mostly left to indulge every impulse and pleasure, you can see why being a dog might hold that escapist appeal.

As an escape, puppies differ from its Otherkin kin. The usual narrative of non-human identifiers tends to evoke mysticism and cross-species spiritualism (and cross-dimensional in the case of fantastical creatures) to interpret their desires to have pointy ears or take flight with a set of feathery wings. The relationship between their human and puppy selves presented here appears to be more contingent and less deep-rooted, at least in how they are presented.

The second interesting aspect to this is the pup subculture is almost entirely male, and that isn't because the men involved are mostly gay. Noting this, Kai suggests it's because women who move into pet play tend to prefer being kittens. I suppose one explanation is the well-worn gender typing of dogs and cats as embodying masculine and feminine traits. That can't be all of it though. Again, going from pups' testimony there is a bonding element to this. Masculinity is changing, but in its hegemonic forms at least the possibilities of intimate but non-sexual relationships between men remains circumscribed. Bonding over and fixating on traditional male pursuits largely remains the order of the day. Something like pup play transgresses this. For the handler, it allows for an exploration of a caring role vis a vis his pups, and for the pup themselves to experience being the object of care by another man. Similarly with the pup meet ups, it allows for a degree of physicality, of touching and being affectionate toward and with other men without triggering complex anxieties around sexuality and propriety - the rules of normal (gendered) human interaction no longer apply and new intimacies "not allowed" by conventional masculinity become possible and are accepted by participants.

There's always a danger with this sort of programme of pointing and laughing - we'll have to see what Gogglebox makes of it. But apart from the sub-salacious subject matter, Secret Life of the Human Pups raises interesting questions about social conventions that go beyond pups and their handlers. If, to paraphrase and twist our bearded German friend, there are groups of people who find solace not just in their animal functions, but in being actual animals, then something is severely lacking in our society if we can't find ourselves as thinking, feeling, sensuous human beings.

Paul Mason Vs Peter Taaffe

I missed this when it appeared on The Daily Politics back in April. What's interesting (or not) about the discussion between Paul and the eternal general secretary is how they talk past one another. Peter puts forward the arguments he's repeated for the last 52 years, and Paul trots out (forgive the useless pun) his networky/counterpower/Negri stuff and neither engages with the position of the other. If the left can't even properly talk to itself, how does it expect to persuade larger numbers to rally around its politics?

Eurovision 2016 Preview

As Howie has reminded me, it's time for the European referendum that truly matters. As I work my way through piles of undergrad essays, I have listened to every single entry not once, but twice - all so you don't have to. Here then is my preview of this year's contest. Who stands out? Who's any good? Who will win?

I always like it when contestants push the envelope a bit, and a few have had a go this year. Whether they've tried too hard is up to the Eurovision voting public to decide. But in the originality stakes, there's Samra for Armenia, which seems pointlessly innovative but follows hot on the heels of last year's haunting piece about the 1915 genocide. Also of interest is Justs of Latvia. This is not so much a song of two halves (a la Norway's Icebreaker), but rather a tune divided. Its foundation is a very contemporary deep house sound, which is wrecked utterly by soaring - yet bland - vocals. Still, good to see some folk want to be down wiv da yoof. The most political entry is Ukraine's 1944 by Jamala. I have no idea why a song named for the year Stalin reoccupied the country would have been a popular choice among the Ukrainian public. Lastly of interest is Sandhja for Finland, just because it's a poppy track that, well, just isn't Eurovision. I can imagine a one-hit diva of the decade past, such as Agnes, having a hit with this back then. But now?

Okay, let's get serious. First, who's going to win? Bear in mind my Eurovision forecasting has proven much worse than my politics punditry. I have a record of abject failure to fall back on. This time, it looks like Le France could do the business. See:



It's not my glass of vino, but it could do well with the Eurovision masses. Tune? Check. Sung in two languages, one of which is English? Sorted. Good looking smiley bloke fronting it up? Yah. If the number of YouTube views are anything to go by, the crown will be Amir's.

But what's this? The bookies disagree? They do. They have this as their favourite:



Yes, Mother Russia. Admittedly, this is a very strong entry. Russia always takes its Eurovision seriously, which must sit uneasily with the country's institutionalised homophobia and allergy to all things camp. And Sergey Lazarev does the Rodina proud here. A rising vocal crescendo, a thick solid beat, and a Eurovision vibe will see it do well. But the winner? Hmmm. The bookies are seldom wrong ...

Other particularly strong entries with the YouTube crowd are Malta and Poland.

Naturally, here's the obligatory plug for the UK's entry:



For once, Eurovision fans have a song we needn't be ashamed of. In fact, I'd go so far and say a) it's good, and b) it's a contender. Yes, I really mean that. The tune is very Eurovision, and Joe and Jake are the kind of inoffensive good-looking lads that will go down a treat with some of the regular audience. For readers overseas, vote, vote, and vote again for jolly old Blighty and its beezer entry!

And now it comes to the big moment. Who am I endorsing? This:



A cross between Barry White and Sébastien Tellier (as @CatherineBuca puts it), Serhat's I Didn't Know for San Marino is the contest's stand out tune. It croons, it discos, it even sleazes (just a little bit), it deserves to go through to the grand final and take the crown. And not only because it's excellent - I want to know how 2017's Eurovision Song Contest can fit in San Marino.

The heats begin Tuesday May 10th and Thursday May 12th, 8pm on BBC Four, and the television event of the year broadcasts 8pm Saturday 14th May on BBC One. Be there or be dull.

Expelling Gerry Downing

I don't recall the last time a micro-sect guru appeared on the BBC's lunch time politics programme to have his views in a seldom-read publication picked over, but it has finally happened. Of course, this does not signal Andrew Neil's conversion to lefty trainspotting, but rather the fact that Gerry Downing has some "forthright views" that were deemed acceptable to allow his admittance to Labour Party membership, before media pressure - and an attack by Dave in the House at yesterday's PMQs - saw his expulsion.

As Trotskyism goes, there is a spectrum that runs from an uncompromising fundamentalism through to revolutionary Keynesians. Gerry's Socialist Fight has always been on the headbanging side of things, and his views haven't moved on at all since he was a regular contributor to the UK Left Network discussion list. But does revolutionary socialism have a place in the Labour Party?

Yes and no. The party has always been a broad church, and to varying degrees revolutionary socialism is a minority pursuit that has always had a place in it. I can think of a number of self-described Marxists holding to the perspective of revolutionary change who've held lay positions in the party and served as councillors, and continue to do so. This is a world of difference from entryists who are part of the party to build their own organisations. Militant had some success in this regard because it presented its politics as not a million miles from the established Labour left. There's little doubt Socialist Fight would ever repeat that because their politics are so mind-bendingly demented. Yet in either case, no organisation should expect to build its own party (or rather, sect) at the expense of another while ensconced in the latter's structures.

These aren't the grounds for Gerry's exclusion, however. Germane here are his comments about Islamic State, the September 11th attacks, and Israel. Of the former two, Gerry is very much an advocate of the most foolish of anti-imperialisms, of putting a plus wherever the US State Department places a minus. The rationale goes all the way back to Trotsky's comments on a hypothetical war between a democratic Britain and a fascist Brazil. As one of the leading imperial powers of the day, from the standpoint of revolutionary politics it was preferable for Britain to lose because victory for Brazil could stir up national liberation struggles in the colonies, as well as weaken one of the chief props of world capitalism. While that had a certain logic to it, Trotsky's argument was time-limited. Applying this position to US involvement in the Syrian civil war is ludicrous, especially as victory for Islamic State would mean tens of millions coming under a regime of the most blackest reaction. Gerry may think US "imperialism" is the greatest threat in the world today, but it's not for people living in IS territory - nor for that matter those cowering under Russian air strikes.

There is an absurd aspect to this as well. Gerry offers IS not political support, but military support. What on Earth does that mean? Not a lot, actually. Jihadis from around the world have provided IS military support by travelling to its territories and taking up arms. I'm not aware of Trotskyists putting together their brigades and putting themselves at the disposal of IS - though there is plenty of evidence of latter day heirs of the International Brigades fighting with the Kurdish YPG. Military support is something super orthodox Trots bang on about, but is something they never follow through with.

And there is Israel, or the "Jewish Question" as Gerry likes to put it. As it happens, I think successive Israeli governments have proven to be grubby, racist, and perpetrators of war crimes in the occupied territories. See, one can be critical of Israel without dog-whistling borderline anti-semitism. Unfortunately for him, Gerry goes far beyond this. In talking of moneyed Jews exerting influence over Western polities, he is treading on dodgy ground indeed. As it happens, Israel does have its supporters - several of them very wealthy - and it does exert a pressure on politics, but Gerry acts as if this is unique and improper. In truth, most countries do exactly the same. The British Council is active in Israel, as are the various equivalents for all of the Western powers. Do they lobby Israeli governments directly and indirectly? Of course they do. While Gerry argues that his claims of "Zionist influence" are the result of a materialist analysis, his hard anti-imperialism cannot acknowledge that his observations are utterly banal.

Banal, but damaging. The problem for Labour is this. Every orthodox Trot in the party with views similar to Gerry's are going to be hunted down and held up to scrutiny, because of Jeremy's record as a seasoned anti-war campaigner. During the Labour leadership contest, several past associations of the leader came to light, and these included conspiracy nuts, anti-semites, and representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah. There are sections of the Tories, the press and, yes, in our own party, who want to associate Jeremy with the sorts of views Gerry Dowling has. And for every Gerry turned up, the more damage is done to his leadership and the party in the eyes of the wider electorate.

Terry Wogan and the Celebrity System

"We'll never see their like again" is a refrain common to the passing of major league celebrities. With David Bowie this was because of his profound influence on pop music and performance, an impact that is probably impossible for anyone to repeat ever. And then there is Terry Wogan who, I would suggest, is of a similar type of celebrity.

What? As beloved Terry Wogan is, can he as a Radio 2 presenter, former talk show host, and longtime commentator on Europe's silly song contest be considered to have much in common with our culture-defining legend? Yes, and it comes down to the political economy of celebrity.

Anyone with a passing similarity with the sidebar of shame knows there's a gradation in the level of celebrity. At the very top are the A-listers of hot pop and film stars, and genuine legends who have distinguished themselves in their chosen fields. Their stardom is usually international in scope - to have made it big in America is more or less a prerequisite. The next level down are national celebrities of import. These can be actors, warblers, presenters, comedians, etc. In this way of grading matters, here is where you'd probably locate Wogan's celebrity. The next rung down are your soap stars, DJs, and various species of presenter and talk show host. And then at the bottom are your Z-list'ers of reality TV stars (amateur and "professional"), talent show contest hopefuls, paparazzi fodder, glamour models, and so on. This is hardly scientific, of course, but if you can think about celebrity as a broad field in which people jostle for media attention and exposure, you could certainly make a plausible stab of segmenting it in this way.

Approaching celebrity as a field has its advantages, but an emphasis on mapping out contemporary positions might ignore the specific routes taken to fame by those at the top of the tree, and miss how celebrity once worked differs from its operation today. And this is where the substantive similarities between Wogan on the one hand, and Bowie on the other start to show up.

One does not have to be a paid up aficionado of postmodern social theory to accept that what it did get right was identifying the tendency to cultural splintering and fragmentation that started in the 1960s, and accelerated in the 80s and 90s. The consequences of which are much disputed and need not detain us here (though more here). Yet over the same period there was a strong counter-tendency to homogenisation and uniformity. This didn't express itself 1984-style, but rather the mass media as was had a narrower range while commanding audiences unheard of these days. When Wogan presented Wogan, at one point 20 million people were regularly rocking up to watch. This wasn't because the past was a foreign country (though it is), it simply reflected a lack of choice. At the time of Wogan's peak we had four terrestrial channels and a small offering on satellite. Go back even further, and TV viewers had fewer options. This meant, culturally speaking, that millions of people had common viewing habits to such an extent that these shared media reference points worked as social glue. It was then, and to a degree remains now, a common currency.

Celebrity-wise, it meant stars who made it under these conditions became a huge deal. There were a plethora of bands and singers when the rocket blew up under Bowie's career, but vast audiences on radio and TV for his work throughout the 70s conferred legendary status upon him. Consistent exposure, which was matched by only a few of his contemporaries, embedded him as an A-list fixture of the star system. And Wogan was exactly the same. A regular on BBC radio since the 60s, and a familiar television face from the 70s, Wogan attained the status of feted national treasure by ubiquity and familiarity. Whereas Bowie's fame (initially) courted notoriety, Wogan's was a gentle, if wry conformity. He wasn't someone you'd meet down the pub or in the queue at the checkout, but his was a presence, and therefore a passing, felt just as keenly by millions of people.

Terry Wogan was a survivor of the old celebrity system as it worked here in Britain. We won't see his like again not simply because he was a one-off. There are plenty of quick-witted Irish men who've made a home at the BBC, after all. No, the way it works now, that fragmentation I talked about, materially rules out the re-emergence of someone who would grow into Wogan's standing. There will always be loved and fondly remembered celebrities for as long as there are celebrities, but to have that reach and deeply held connection between a person and the thoughts and feelings of tens of millions? That time has passed.