After giving two interviews this week in which he declared 'I am not gay' - not to mention at least one last week (and endless others) - Simon Hughes MP explained that this was a politician's answer - which is to say incomplete - as in, Mark Oaten: I am a happily married man ...and also like to do the odd rent boy occasionally oooh go on, in my face big boy; Or Charles Kennedy: I don't have a drink problem ...my drink's cabinet is perfectly well stocked than you very much Or Tony Blair: On 18 March 2003, just before the UK went to war with Iraq, Mr Blair told the House of Commons that it was palpably absurd" to accept that Saddam Hussein "contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence" had "decided unilaterally to destroy these weapons" - he then turned to fellow ex-lawyer Geoff 'catch me if you can' Hoon and whispered under his breath - "after all you can't destroy what you don't have CAN you now - mmm you can tell these halfwits haven't been to law school, hee hee!"
Anyway as the BBC put it today Hughes explains gay admission - and I can't help thinking that that headline alone somehow puts back the cause of tolerance and equality in our society by at least a few years, say to somewhere around the time a certain Welsh Secretary claimed he had been robbed in Clapham...
What on earth are the liberals DOING? Its still over a month until they elect a leader and at this rate they won't have a party or a reputation left by then.
Green Room Charlie built the party's current electoral strength upon an admirable reputation for speaking plainly about matters concerning which the other parties were not prepared to. Blair wriggled and then blamed the intelligence services and those evil lying Iraqis, the Tories blamed evil lying Tony. Charlie rose above and stuck, so as to speak, to his non-guns.
The British people welcomed this and rewarded the liberals with enough support for it to be reasonable to assume that they might just get to hold the balance of coalition power after the next election has been contested by two right wing atlanticists with an obsession with destroying public services.
Then the right wing atlanticists called up all their mates... or shit just happened, who knows. One thing is for sure while you COULD make it up - you probably wouldn't have assumed quite this level of implosion, quite THIS FAST - my bet is on the phone calls going out. Put it this way, recently there's been a LOT of nasty commentary of a not totally generic nature in the backrooms of the companies serving the village and now it all kind of makes sense - for all that, in Hughes case at least, his shocking admission was 20 year old news to most people.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
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6 comments:
The Westminster Village I mean - REALLY!
Ultimately, I can see this going one of two ways. Either we end up with politicians who are inhumanly "without sin", or we learn to live with the fact that, hey, our political leaders have had the odd three-in-a-bed session with rent boys but, hey, who hasn't, right?
I've always been rather disgusted by this kind of forensic media scrutiny of the lives of people in public office, but it's becoming so ubiquitous that perhaps it will end up negating itself, nobody will give a shit any more, and politicians will be able to get back to worrying about the important stuff.
Or am I being hopelessly optimistic?
You're probably being hopelesly optimistic.
Philip Hensher I think made a valid point about the message sent out by such blatant lying and Andreas Whittam Smith made the same point from an obviously rather different perspective in saying that it should not be reasonable for politicians to assume they can lie and I think THAT is the issue, hence my laboured comparison of other examples - i.e. spot the one that matters - Yup you got it its the one with all the casualties in Mesopotamia - but the other create a climate in which the notion of tuth becomes devalued by the idea that being misledaing through incompleteness is not lying - or 'not misleading the house and the people'.
The liberals best suit - laughable though that now seems - was truthfulness as far as Joe Public was concerned.
I agree that the Liberals public face was one of truthfulness, and that's been the biggest casualty of the Kennedy and Hughes revelations. Not that I've ever seen them as a particularly truthful party or a party of high morals: getting on for 20 years ago, when I lived in Twickenham, the Liberals (or whatever they were called in those days) ran a national campaign of "no tactical voting", as it was the only way they stood to make any headway in most of the country. However in Twickenham their slogan was "a vote for Labour is a wasted vote". It's a long time ago admittedly, and came from rather a different party than today's, but for me it serves as a reminder that any party will only adopt high-minded principles for as long as they think it will win them votes.
However, I don't think you can put all of the blame on politicians for lying. The media has created an atmosphere where it's impossible for a politician not to lie if they want to get anywhere (unless, of course, they have a completely clean conscience, which would make them something other than human in my eyes). Admittedly Simon Hughes was brought down by the fact that he lied rather than because of his sexuality, but I think Kennedy was more damaged by the admission to a drinking problem than he was by the earlier lying. The problem for politicians is that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't (anyone remember what happened when William Waldegrave told the truth about lying?)
Well I think the thing with Charlie is that the media and everyone else collaborated in silence (ITV actually ditched a scheduled interview because he sounded p*ssed on the tape etc) it was only when his own people stabbed him in the back that everyone elsewas able to stab him in the front and ended the conspiracy of silence- its pretty much the model.
For all that I see your point on the media it is in a sense a response to media management and announcements in legalise so that people can say - 'well I didn't actually LIE as such though you may have been left with an inaccurate impression of my meaning' think messrs Blair, Hoon, Byers etc - to which the media respond well I am just going to haveto either second guess or interrogate but as most operators on both sides aren't princes of interogatory forensics we end up with bullying, bitchin' and fightin'.
Do you watch The Thick of It, by the way?...
Hmm, which came first, the media management or the media intrusion? I'm inclined to think the former was a response to the latter, rather than vice versa.
Only seen one episode of The Thick of It so far (kicking myself for not catching more, but I'm not very good at watching TV), absolutely spot on! Bizarrely, it was the one where they held a focus group on what to do with young offenders. The next day, Blair announced his "Respect" policy.
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