Respect and the Politics of Smugness

I'm afraid I've been listeningto the Today Programme again, but on the positive side I haven't been shouting at the radio this week.

I found myself in a strange limbo of disinterest, systems were shutting down, I could hardly drag myself across the kitchen toward a chronologically important shave - in the sense that this is a crucial precursor to departure for work... Time wasbecoming treacle the grain ofthe table was suddenly really interesting (OK, OK its a choramandel veneer - it actually is quite interesting, but enough!)

What on earth was happening, after all a Cabinet Minister from our own dear government was on the radio talking about how ID cards will save us from terror, enough surely to rile anyone with warm feelings toward the land of Lorca and Cervantes, but no nothing doing, what was happening - was I becoming apolitical, did I no longer care about human rights or even for God's sake truth?

No, the trouble was it was Charles, 2 main-courses-please, Clarke. And the thing is Charles just doesn't play the game. He doesn't argue. He makes statements which from the moment they've left his hair-trimmed chops immediately begin to sound unattributable and almost indefinably vague.

The interviewer says something perfectly straightforward like 'ID cards didn't stop the Madrid bomb did they' and off Charlie goes 'well, you see, I could argue...' [what do you mean 'could' - are you arguing it or not you mock-academic chump? Are you engaged in this fr*ggin' conversation or or are you merely commenting on this latest attack on our civil liberties - which you, yes you, Mr Clarke, are steering through the house of uncommonly many lawyers?]

Its wierd but this has the effect of engendering immense apathy in this breakfaster - obviously the interviewer wants to wring his neck - but can't, so on and on it goes - FOR AGES... 'well you know I would say' [what do you mean 'would' - are you saying it or not?!] ...'we have found..' [in your crystal ball one assumes]....etc ['and you see...']

Eventually I managed to get annoyed (as I'm sure you can see) but only afterwards, and out of a combination of boredom and disenfranchisement - I didn't feel like I'd actually heard an argument, nor even a discussion. The condescension of Clarke's approach however ultimately got me thinking.

It had a curious resonance of an interview I'd read earlier in the week with David Milliband, by Colin Brown, it was fairly content-free, he'd managed a pull-quote on how social order was not old-fashioned and there was a strange passage where David protested that he was not the new Jean-Jacques Rousseau (err, yeah, cos we were confused...); a bit of a wierd whitter about how he used to get criticised for celebrating young people too much (over exam results) and now he's accused of hating them as minister for respect and hoodie-exclusion; a claim that parents with misbehaving kids need help and an all too penetrable but curiously-phrased comment on being able to discuss PR in the cabinet - though he doesn't agree with it - which went "We may be a broad church but we don't have an Inquisition." (mayhap some Catholic joke I guess, but I suspect you see my point - its either too clever or not clever - inquisitions are not needed by broad churches for all the irony in the literal meaning of 'catholic' so really a bit of a 'must try harder' David).

My point is this, I know David may not terribly like Colin Brown, but I the reader am not Colin and I do not like reading interviews given by people who are clearly too smug and bored to really bother engaging with the question - the exam results non-answer was a response to a question about ASBO's for goodness sake!

Yes the election is won, but an approach to political discussion which revolves around pretending that the issues are not issues is not likely to better engage the dwindling numbers of voters backing this government. New Labour is starting to sound like Smug Labour and this is dangerous because poor old Mr Brown is going to need someone awake to listen to him in 2009 or so. Otherwise people might just decide to back the right wing party that sounds right wing instead of the one that mixes an authoritarian approach to civil liberties with mildly progressive tinkering and a 'shake 'em up and see where they fall' approach to public services. And just imagine what that other right of centre party could do with a national identity database, the right to imprison citizens indefinitely without trial and an in-house legal team committed to proving that its safe to deport people to Zimbabwe...