Saturday, August 23, 2008 

Weekend links.

The now becoming regular weekend round-up of sorts. For the story behind the rather strange picture, see here.

Starting with foreign affairs:

Chick Yog - Gordon Brown is right on Afghanistan

Lib Con/Conor Foley - Faith, reason and foreign policy

Lenin and Blood and Treasure on Bernard Henri-Levy's trip to Georgia.

Nosemonkey - Russia: History and Humiliation.

Shiraz Socialist - Concluding the sectarian rumpus over an article by an Alliance for Workers' Liberty member which some took as defending an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.

The Daily (Maybe) - Obama's foreign policy is not a weakness

Simon Jenkins - We tilt at windmills as world war looms

Domestic:

New Statesman / Brian Cathcart - More on the Book of Dave

Stumbling and Mumbling - 16 years of unbroken growth? No

Anton Vowl on absolute top form - first on Richard Littlecock and general tabloid racism, then more specifically on racism from the Mail, and finally from the utterly despicable Express.

Minette Marrin and Matthew Norman both comment on the return of Gary Glitter and the tabloid obsession with him. More than anything, what's apparent is that he adores the attention; if the press really wants him to suffer, the best thing it could do would be to forget he even exists.

Finally, via PDF, the fuzzy spot gives a unique send off to a friend by disposing of his pornography, taking it to where it truly belongs - in the woods and undergrowth where the next generation can find it.

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Friday, August 22, 2008 

al-Qaida in Britain return.

It's interesting to say the least that the BBC are reporting that the arrests made in Lancashire last week are connected to the investigation into the supposed setting up of "al-Qaida in Britain". You might recall that this got certain sections of the media very excited back in January, after a message was posted on the al-Ekhlass jihadist forum which threatened both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair with death if British troops weren't withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of March. As both are still very much with us and there hasn't been even the sniff of a major attack for over a year, the scepticism with which it was treated outside of the confines of Newsnight and the Times seems to have been very much warranted.

The three men arrested, all in their early twenties, were apparently about to travel to that well-known hot-bed of Islamic militancy, Finland. The ages of the men perhaps further gives the game away: if this truly was another franchise of al-Qaida setting itself up, it hardly seems likely that they would have chosen three individuals hardly out of nappies to head it. From the sketches of what we know about the offshoots which have spread across the Muslim world, the leaders of the groups have tended to be veterans of past conflicts, or at least long-time adherents to the takfirist/Salafist ideology which underpins al-Qaida's thought processes. While al-Zarqawi, former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, now the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq, only turned up in Afghanistan after the fighting had finished against the Soviets in the 80s, he was still considered a veteran. His successor (or at least considered real successor, with Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as a figurehead, Masri serving as ISI's "minister for war"), presumed to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an organisation formerly helmed by Ayman al-Zahawiri himself. Elsewhere, formerly independent radical groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, such as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, now known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb, keeping their leadership intact.

As a security source said at the time, this was always likely to be the work of fantasists dreaming about truly belonging to al-Qaida. The short shrift their proclamations were given on al-Ekhlass further underlined how even amongst their apparent peers they were viewed as being bullshit artists. If it does indeed turn out these three were responsible, then it will only likely further show the amateurish nature of the current "radicals" in this country.

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Thursday, August 21, 2008 

Understanding radicalisation.

The MI5 report "leaked" to the Guardian, titled Understanding radicalisation and violent extremism in the UK, does the reassuring job of telling you little which you didn't already know while confirming just that which you did.

Firstly, it makes clear the idea that that there a number of extremist preachers doing most of the radicalising, or even brainwashing is either completely out-of-date, if it ever was the case. Rather, it's what a number of individuals have been arguing for quite some time: that those who become radicalised are often first exposed to extremist material online, become engaged in those communities, but also often have to have some sort of real world link to either a charismatic or popular local figure also versed in radical Islam. Once inside such small autonomous groupings, the emotional reward of belonging comes into play, giving meaning to a life which might have been up till then wholly lacking in it, with the other members almost becoming like an extended family, similar to criminal gangs.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this in action could be the 7/7 bombers. Whilst the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, has since been portrayed as an angry self-obsessed sexually frustrated, even constipated psychopath, almost the opposite is the case when you consider Mohammad Sidique Khan, the alleged 7/7 ringleader. On the face of it, MSK had everything to live for: his daughter had only just past her 1st birthday, he had previously worked as a teaching assistant and youth worker, and very few people generally had a bad word to say about him. He appears to have been conscientious, charismatic and well-liked; everything which ultimately led to those around him deciding to end their lives whilst murdering others around them.

The idea that MSK was after the promised 72 virgins for martyrs doesn't seem convincing when he was so clearly devoted both to his child and his wife; he was not, perhaps unlike the other bombers, stuck in dead-end, unrewarding jobs and so frustrated with his lot in life; and whilst he didn't talk about his religious beliefs to many people, he was certainly devout without being overbearing. He played the role of the gatherer, the charismatic leader which those around him looked up to and enjoyed the company of. The abiding image we have of him, outside of the few other video clips, including the one where he says goodbye, movingly, to his daughter, is the "martyrdom video" he recorded which was subsequently released by As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media arm. His self-serving justifications, now all too familiar, belie the man that he clearly was in private.

Also noted in the report that by no means are those who become radicalised well versed in Islam in its totality. Indeed, few are probably anywhere near as versed as this Islamist blogger suggests for training recruits, and that is mostly a collection of the familiar radical preachers. Probably closer would be the suggestions made by this forum inhabitant, both courtesy of the excellent Jihadica blog. While opinion is divided over whether Islam is inherently violent, and neither side should be dismissed out of hand, it's probably telling that those who have emerged from radical groups have done so only after they have properly assessed a far wider spectrum of theological thought, Ed Husain, Maajid Nawaz et al. Rachel North, who has more reason than most for wanting to get to the very bottom of what motivates radicalisation and subsequently terrorism, has reported that Atila Ahmet, one of those recently jailed as part of the "paintball jihad" had to be segregated from other extremists, due to his studies into Islam and renunication of his past beliefs.

Additionally left on the myth heap is the idea that all of those radicalised or involved in extremism are asylum seekers, when half of those evaluated by MI5 were born here, with the other half mostly immigrating here mainly for economic reasons, that poverty is not an issue, as shown by the amount of those stuck in "McJobs" despite in many cases having decent qualifications, and that only those who are "pure" in their past behaviour are eligible, is if that wasn't laughable enough considering the criminal schemes which those who have carried out attacks have indulged in. Also doubtful is the claim by one group which suggested that those raided often didn't have any pornography on their computers when they were searched; the report suggests that despite it being generally being considered haram to consume alcohol in Islam, some were drinkers, drug-takers and even used prostitutes, although again the 9/11 example of some of the attackers visiting a strip club the night before also should have put paid to that one. Some of this could perhaps be a result of the jihadis adopting the ideology of extremist groups such as Takfir wal-Hirja, whose members "blended in" by shaving their beards, drinking, etc, although again, it might just be that like everyone else, jihadis can't live up to their own moral standards and so can be seen as hypocrites.

There are a couple of things that do appear to be missing from the report however. There doesn't seem to be any mention, for example, of the role that foreign policy plays in the radicalisation progress. Whilst we should never fall into the trap of dismissing terrorism as being purely down to our own actions in countries considered Muslim states, it would be equally naive to dismiss the idea that it has no role whatsoever. Yet nowhere, at least in the Guardian report of the document, does it allude to our actions in either Afghanistan or Iraq, which seems strange, especially when you consider that the security services themselves warned that action in the latter would lead directly to an increase in attacks. Also, perhaps less suprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any reference to the security services' own role in helping radicalisation along. Only today we learn indisputably that MI5 were involved in the interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, currently languishing in Guantanamo and potentially facing execution, which led to his horrendous torture in both Pakistan and Morocco. Yesterday I mentioned the role of MI5 in the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, both of whom had had direct relations with the service. This is without also mentioning the unsubtle actions of the police, for instance in the raid on Forest Gate, which contributes to the victimhood mentality which most certainly is a part of radicalisation. The report also makes clear that this is not just a mentality or illusion; racism, discrimination, inequality, "mainstream UK media coverage that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Muslims", all play a role which is heightened and repeated again and again until the only response is to strike back physically, with the religious ideology as the justification.

If all this suggests that the fight against terrorism and radicalisation is as infinitely complex as the process itself is, then it doesn't necessarily need to be so. What is clear is that the heavy-handed government approach is still at the moment part of the problem rather than the solution. Also unhelpful is the continuing demonisation of Islam as a whole, as shown recently by Peter Oborne (PDF). Instead, as if it wasn't already obvious, the fight has to be led from inside and within rather than from above. Organisations like the Quilliam Foundation are almost certainly part of the mix, although they could do with turning down the rhetoric a shade, or at least Ed Husain could. The security services need to end their complicity in torture and rendition, if they have not already. Subtlety, rather than constant new big initiatives and huge police operations, especially when accompanied by egregious exaggeration are also key.

If we exclude the apparent failed attempt by the convert in Exeter, then there hasn't been a major foiled plot or failed, serious attempt at a terrorist attack in this country now for over a year. The vast majority of those who do become radicalised in any case are mostly not interested in attacking Britain; their concerns are more with either fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the other current jihadi hot spots. The real worry might well be when those who have graduated from those "universities of terrorism" potentially return, and we can hardly say then that we were not in any way responsible for the blow-back.

Related:
Spy Blog - Whistleblower leak or propaganda briefing?

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Wednesday, August 20, 2008 

The political equivalent of Soylent Green.


There are two ways to look at George Osborne and the Tories' latest kite-flying exercise, this time on social justice, equality and fairness: you can accept that it takes a great degree of courage when very few dispute that under the Conservatives inequality sky-rocketed to levels which hadn't been seen since the early 70s, that it's the Tories recognising their past mistakes and moving onto the New Labour agenda; or you can just be staggered by the chutzpah from a group of politicians that don't seem to have any limits to how far they will go to prove that they really, honestly, truly care about subjects which they previously had very little time for.

On the basis of Osborne's article, it's difficult not to come to the second conclusion. It's with a piece with most of the recent articles by the Conservatives that have appeared in the Graun - big on rhetoric, minuscule on actual policy. The one thing that Osborne's has going for it is that unlike Oliver Letwin, who managed to write over 600 words without naming one specific policy, he actually suggests what the Tories would actually do were they to win power. The problem is that we've heard it all before multiple times, and indeed, some of it is what Yvette Cooper covered in her piece on Monday.

Instead, what we have is mostly the same old mood music, the speaking your weight which so grates, especially when it comes from someone like Osborne. This week's Private Eye, quoting from the Conservative document "A Failed Generation", dealing with the idea that schools have to be the "engines of social mobility - where talent and hard work, not background, determine success" notes that the self-same Conservative shadow cabinet which supposedly drew it up contains no less than 14 Old Etonians. Osborne himself is an Old Pauline. It's the sort of education you require to be to able say, without moments of doubt, that "after a long and bitter ideological argument over two centuries, ... the free market economy is the fairest way of rewarding people for their efforts." The new Conservatives however, being caring and sharing, now accept that "unfettered free markets are also flawed."

It would of course be lovely if the Conservatives had came to that conclusion, even if did further constrict the ideological space the three main parties are fighting over. Yet this sudden acknowledgement that unfettered free markets are also flawed seems to be incredibly opportunistic: only last year John Redwood announced his unreconciled belief in the "trickle down theory" and also proposed removing all the current "red tape" surrounding mortgages, right at the time when the unsustainable lunacy of 115% or higher mortgages has brought the likes of Northern Rock so low. In any case, Osborne doesn't actually say what the Tories would do to tame the free market; he only mentions a "robust framework". Yet isn't that exactly the red tape which the Conservatives and business so despise? He mentions also flexible working and a charge on non-domiciles, but with again without providing any details on either.

The same goes for redistribution, which Osborne believes has failed. The Conservatives, the supposed party of radical economic reform, or at least since the days of Thatcher, again don't offer an alternative here. As has been argued before here and elsewhere, the best possible alternative policy is to abolish tax credits and raise the lowest earners out of tax altogether, at the same time instituting a basic citizens' income and raising the top rates for the highest earners, or at least those of over £100,000 a year, and also cracking down far far harder on tax evasion, which by some estimates costs more than £25bn a year in lost revenue, far above that on benefit fraud and through overpayments on tax credits. All Osborne is offering are the same crackdowns on the sick and the unemployed, with an ever harsher regime that that envisioned under Purnell.

Osborne though perhaps really drops himself in it by mentioning fairness between generations. While this is a dig at the huge borrowing, it also brings to mind another tax change which the Tories have promised, that on inheritance. Their raising of threshold to £1 million is one of the only few firm pledges which the party has made, and while it goes down well in middle England, where most seem to be the under the impression that they'll be paying while it only affects 6%, and will even less considering the drop in house prices and the subsequent raises which the government has introduced, it will also mean a further drop in the receipts that the Conservatives will have to work with, as well as backing background rather talent and hard work throughout the generations.

You know full well though that none of this really matters. The Guardian's comment pages have only become more bulging with Tories of late because they think that they need to be slightly less dogmatic than in the past in order to dispense with the fusty old image of themselves not caring in the slightest about things like social mobility. It's also designed to annoy their own grassroots, exactly as New Labour and Tony Blair so often did. He seemed happiest not when he was fighting the opposite party, but instead his own backbenchers, because it so delighted the right-wing press. Here was someone who was doing their job for them, even if the policies were perhaps a bit to the left of what they would like. The difference here is that the promises are so vague as to be meaningless. No one for a moment believes that if Osborne becomes the next chancellor he'll be making many more speeches to the Demos thinktank; no, this is just another step in the public relations battle, the phony war between Labour and the Conservatives over who can occupy the tiniest piece of ground you've ever seen, situated somewhere to the right of centre on the political compass. Russia and Georgia has nothing on this.

Once again, the political choice we are left with, at the exact same time when the politicians themselves so emphasise choice in every sector but their own, is little to non-existent. Would you like James Purnell for your welfare policy Sir, with his slightly less sinister grin and tight fist, or would you prefer Chris Grayling, with his forced smile and glint in his eye? The British political scene really is an unpleasant, claustrophobic place to be in when the most attractive party looks, from here at least, to be the Liberal Democrats. And even their leader and their policies look to be degrading into the same mulch. Soylent Green for you Sir? Honestly, it's delicious.

Update: This has been posted over on Lib Con, where there are more comments. Tom Freemania also has an excellent fisk of the Conservative document underpinning Obsorne's article and speech.

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8/20/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Dour.

Dour prime minister's team respond to a jokey petition with a jokey video that likely took all of 10 minutes to put together and cost precisely nothing. Dour bloggers and Tories respond by being more dour than the dourest man on Earth. World continues to turn while Dizzy's face goes a familiar shade of red.

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8/20/2008 11:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: What a difference a year makes part two.

Having wished that Jade Goody, described as ghastly and a vile pig-ignorant racist bully that will "hopefully now slither back under the rock from where she crawled", the Sun devotes not one, but two, three, four, five, six articles on her in today's paper, having helpfully been diagnosed as suffering from cancer during the silly season.

The paper's leader takes a remarkably different tone:

JADE Goody has upset some people in her meteoric career as a Big Brother celeb.

None less than a newspaper which decreed that the plebiscite for Jade to be kicked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house was the most important vote since the general election. There's nothing quite like a sense of perspective, is there?

But both critics and fans will wish her well as she arrives home from India to battle the Big C.

First to offer support was co-star Shilpa Shetty who put their “racism” clash aside and offered prayers for Jade’s recovery.


Ah, so the vile pig-ignorant racist is now so rehabilitated that the spat between Shetty and Goody can be described as "racism". Poppadom, anyone?


As The Sun has revealed, Jade’s first fear is not for herself but for her children.

The ex-dental nurse has spent her life beating the odds.

We believe her family will lend her the strength to win this struggle, too.


Indeed, she's succeeded in getting the Sun newspaper to change its mind, which is a very rare event. Isn't it incredible what cancer can do for you?

Elsewhere, we've discussed previously the incredibly strange fact that the Sun tends to big-up MySpace while it prints stories about Facebook which tend to be less positive, and today is no exception. The Sun Online editor has decided that this rather dull story about someone tracing his family through MurdochSpace is worthy of a position only slightly below the main stories. Considering it's not even written by a Sun hack, rather a "Staff Reporter", it's all a rather rum do.

And finally, the award for stinking hypocrisy goes too...

WELL-MEANING parents are wasting good money on so-called multi-vitamins.

It turns out they are little more than sweets with tiny levels of nutrients — and the only healthy thing is the manufacturers’ profits.

They should be thoroughly ashamed of playing on parents’ fears.


The Sun would of course never play on parents' fears:

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8/20/2008 09:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Alternative answers to asinine questions.

MI6 are apparently so desperate for operational officers that they've taken to advertising on the front page of the Grauniad.

The advert reads:

"There are three strangers in the room that you need on your side. How do you get them to warm to you?"

"Could you be an operational officer?"

"www.mi6officers.co.uk"


Well, failing getting them on your side, you could do what MI6 (SIS) and its sister organisation MI5 did in the cases of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna. Having confronted al-Banna at his home and failing to convince him to spy for them, MI5 subsequently informed the Americans that he and al-Rawi would be travelling to Gambia, and that they had a "electronic device" that could form part of an improvised explosive device, or as they're otherwise known, a bomb. What MI5 didn't tell the Americans was that this electronic device was, err, a battery charger from Argos. Still, that didn't bother the CIA too much. For them the pair's relationship with Abu Qatada was enough for them to be first flown to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and then latterly to Guantanamo, where they "stayed" for four years.

Whether the MI6 hierarchy would regard that as another acceptable option should you apply remains to be seen.

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8/20/2008 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 

Piffle.

Finally, a politician has the guts to challenge David Cameron over our "Broken Society":

If you believe the British press, the youth of today is aimless, feckless and hopeless, addicted to their PlayStations, lacking in respect and lacking in the emotional discipline needed to cope with a big match occasion.

If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness.

And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is. Do not adjust your set: that really is a collection of smiling, well-balanced young British people, giving pleasingly self-deprecating accounts of how they have managed to haul in medal after medal after medal.


Which politically correct left-wing lunatic dares to be so optimistic in the face of such overwhelming evidence of how awful and atomised we are? Err, Boris Johnson. Doubtless he will be swiftly treated to a re-education session courtesy of CCHQ and Andy Coulson.

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8/19/2008 09:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Maddie-balls: the public joins in.

I'm not sure whether to laugh hysterically at this story or do the diametric opposite:

When two British tourists spotted a woman leading a child with long blonde hair on the Croatian holiday island of Krk, they immediately thought it was Madeleine McCann.

The couple became even more convinced that the youngster was the missing Briton after secretly taking a couple of photographs.

So when the adult leading the child was not looking, the British woman grabbed the youngster's arm.

It was only then that she realised the child not only wasn't Madeleine, it wasn't even a little girl.

To make matters worse, the boy's father is a famous Croatian footballer and his mother - who was with him at the time - is a renowned glamour model.

...

Their son Leone has long blond hair like Madeleine's, but the similarity ends there - he is even six months younger than the missing three-year-old.


It really does have everything - gorgeous pouting glamour model, the irony of a couple attempting to snatch a child they believe is Our Maddie, and just to rub it in, it turns out the child isn't even female. I can't exactly comment on tastelessness involving the McCann case, but it's also incredibly questionable to have a photograph of Drpic posing alongside one of Madeleine in a similar position, almost comparing them in the style that the Mail has chosen.

The report does though illustrate in the starkest fashion the sort of hysteria which the McCann case has inspired, all of it only exacerbated by the splashing on front pages of children who look slightly similar to "Maddie" when seen from a distance. One moment the newspapers and the McCanns themselves are encouraging everyone to "keep looking for Maddie" and saying that "every sighting raises awareness", then when the inevitable happens and someone almost takes the law into their own hands, it's only thanks to an understanding and already famous couple used to attention that a situation didn't turn out to be as unpleasant as it could have been.

You have to leave it to a commenter to make a stupid situation look understandable by comparison:

A 2 year old boy mistaken for a 5 year old girl? How long before paedophiles everywhere are using the excuse of "we thought it was Madddie" when they attempt to snatch a child? How long before some idiot does grab a child from their parents and hurts them?

- Dee, East Midlands, 18/8/2008 14:51


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8/19/2008 09:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

What a difference a year makes...


TONIGHT is a moment of truth for Britain.

Out of nowhere, a Channel 4 show watched by a few million has erupted from being a bit of a laugh to a defining moment in the way Britain is seen by the rest of the world.

Make no mistake. Much more hangs on tonight’s Celebrity Big Brother eviction vote than the issue of whether Jade Goody or Shilpa Shetty stays in the house.

At stake is whether we are happy to be seen as a nation willing to tolerate vile bullying and foul-mouthed yobbishness.

That is why The Sun urges every reader who loves Britain to pick up a phone and make sure the ghastly Jade Goody is kicked out tonight.



SANITY has prevailed. Thank Heaven for that. Jade Goody went into the Big Brother house appearing to be simply a fun-loving working-class girl canny enough to have made millions from her 15 minutes of fame. It was all a meticulously manufactured lie. She has left the house with her true personality laid bare: A vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class. Incredible as it may seem, last night’s vote was the most important in Britain since the last General Election.

...

Hopefully Jade will now slither back under the rock from where she crawled before her debut on Big Brother in 2002.

And so, 18 months later:




Get well Jade: Your messages

PLEASE post your messages of support and goodwill for BB legend Jade Goody


Whether once Jade has recovered from her cancer scare she'll be required to crawl back under her rock again, or once the silly season is over, whichever comes first, is entirely at the whim of Rebekah Wade.

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8/19/2008 08:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 18, 2008 

The book of Dave.

Being around 9 months behind everyone else as usual, I'm still reading the Alastair Campbell diaries, which I'll probably eventually post a review of. One of the things that hits you, apart from how unpleasant Campbell is towards anyone who steps so much as an inch out of line, Clare Short being a perennial target, is how much of his time is taken up by the most inane and vacuous garbage which made up both New Labour's modus operandi and much of the press coverage which accompanied it. It's all focus groups, policy discussions which resemble Blair's verb-less speeches, and Blair's constant panic attacks over delivering those self-same speeches. It's little wonder that Campbell is such a misanthropist; such bumpf would be enough to turn anyone stark raving mad.

As this blog has noted on a number of previous occasions, the Conservative party under Cameron wants to be the new Blairites. It's increasingly clear also that they're using Campbell's diaries as a sort of Bible as to how to present Cameron and their policies, or at least those ones which they've sketched out. Labour's response has been to paint Cameron as the ultimate vapid spokesperson, the shallow PR salesman. This attack doesn't work because we all know that's exactly how Blair presented himself; as the thoroughly straight kind of guy who wasn't Anthony but Tony. This got Blair an almost free ride until half-way through the second term, when it turned out that he did in fact have principles, but they weren't ones that the bulk of the Labour party shared. By then it was too late.

The vital difference with Cameron is that he's all the things that Blair was whilst at the same time being an undoubted dyed-in-the-wool Conservative, albeit a Modern One. To soften this slightly, the Conservatives have gone through the self same PR-tricks that New Labour did. Perhaps the ultimate summation of everything that Blair has bequeathed is that he vastly preferred the sofa on This Morning and later Richard to Judy to being interrogated by either Paxman or on the Today programme. That's understandable, but it made a mockery of serious politics. At the same time as Campbell was moaning endlessly about media triviality, his boss was preening himself in front of the execrable daytime TV couple.

Cameron and his media suits are slightly more canny than that. While there's no doubting he'll be occupying plenty of sofas in the times to come, in the here and now he's given a series of interviews to the editor of GQ magazine, Dylan Jones, published today as a book which Jones describes in the introduction as "the book of Dave". It's described, entirely accurately, as being a book about a politician for people who don't buy books about politicians. In about the only political entry in the entire thing, or at least in the excerpts the media have provided us with, Cameron informs us that he intends to be as radical a social reformer as Thatcher was an economic reformer. Even this is hardly an exclusive, as he's said it already on more than one occasion. Still, with the politics out of the way, Dave can get on to talking about himself some more and who he really is: he, like with Blair, wishes to be seen as classless, lest anyone have any illusions about the nature of his rather privileged upbringing; his favourite novel is Goodbye to All That; he prefers dogs to cats; his favourite soap is Neighbours, when Kylie Minogue was in it; and he prefers Little Britain to Alan Partridge, proving he really does have no taste whatsoever. There's only two questions that he doesn't seems to have been asked: boxers or briefs and pink or brown.

All this feels fairly sordid. I really don't care what soap the potential prime minister prefers, and rather resent the idea that I either need to know or want to know. I'm far more interested in why he thinks it's a good thing to act like someone with no knowledge of history whatsoever, or at least with no proper analysis of it, apropos his visit to Georgia and comments before it. Thing is, I have a horrible feeling that I'm in a minority here. This man of the people crap, as phoney and see-through as it is, seems to sell. After all, we put up with Blair for ten years, and even as he left the myth that he was the "great communicator" was still going round. As long as you're young, reasonably good-looking and can do a decent speech, even if it means precisely nothing, you can apparently get anywhere.

This is where Labour has gone wrong in attacking Cameron. However much shit you throw at him, for the moment nothing is sticking. Blair wasn't called Teflon Tony for nothing. It will probably take a couple of years, if not longer before people start to tire of his face and his complete analytical failure. Politics, ladies and gentlemen, however much we wish otherwise, is now all in the presentation, and Cameron and co are winning hands down.

Yvette Cooper, for her part, almost gets it. Unlike Miliband's shambles earlier in the month, she does hit a few of Cameron's weak spots, focusing as she does on the economy. As much as she quotes Clinton however, it's not just the slowdown, it's also the fact that it's Gordon Brown who's the leader of the country and that he's overwhelmingly responsible. We all know that Cameron's wheezes on tax are either focused directly at those who can afford it (inheritance tax) or those who don't need it (the long married middle classes who will overwhelming benefit from whatever amount the Tories decide marriage should be worth), while stamp duty is a side issue. She's right that the Conservative position on Northern Rock was a shambles, where they didn't have a clue what to do, leading to Vince Cable, who did know what he was talking about, being the first person the media went to for comment.

She, like all the others though, has almost completely ignored his "Broken Britain" gambit, which is just screaming out to be knocked into touch. There is no getting away from the fact that in the inner cities especially there are real intractable problems, whether involving worklessness, crime or family breakdown, but to apply this simplistic, solipsistic diagnosis to the entire country isn't just wrong, it ought to be seen as laughable, amateurish, and most of all, insulting. What's even more outrageous is that their solutions to this, whether they be the welfare reform they propose or the tax cuts mentioned above, are only likely to make things worse. The only real obstacle to an all-out assault on the Conservatives over this, and really, when better a time was there to do it than after the last set of crime figures, is that the tabloids themselves have been promoting the idea, especially the Sun. Again, if we're meant to be learning from New Labour's rise to power, their soundbite that was Britain deserved better, and that things could only get better. It was an attack on the Tories while at the same time being positive. It wasn't especially meaningful, but it was better than half of the other stuff they'd come up with. Broken Britain instead is wholly negative, giving an image of a nation which is in such a state that radical social reform on the scale of Thatcher's economic reforms, which ironically caused much of the social stagnation we now have, are the only solution. There's a huge open goal, and Labour are refusing to score. Vacuousness it seems, as always, is here to stay.

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8/18/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Collector's item.

A positive Daily Mail front page:

And there I was thinking the country was going to the dogs, overflowing with immigrants, criminals and paedophiles...

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8/18/2008 11:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Sunday, August 17, 2008 

Weekend links.

A bad weekend for the Sun newspaper, covered by both myself and Sim-O over on the Sun Lies blog. For those yet to visit, more or less all the contributors have now posted and I think many will be impressed by both the breadth of coverage to come and the talent of the editors which Tim has brought together. I know I was, and I was privy to the set-up. Eric the Fish also comments on Carlsberg pulling out of the Sun deal.

Elsewhere:

Lenin on the costs of NATO expansionism.

Jamie on Hizbullah and Russia-Georgia.

Lots of excellent comment on the above on OpenDemocracy Russia.

A Labour MP actually calling for the super rich to be taxed more? Get ready for the brick-bats, Ivan Lewis.

The truth emerges over the "battle of Jugroom Fort", which while not quite on the scale as the US lies about Pat Tillman, still suggests that we should always be cynical about stories of battlefield derring-do.

Juan Cole links to an Al-Jazeera report on the claims and counter-claims of atrocities in Georgia/South Ossetia.

The "decents", having been mostly quiet over Georgia-Russia up till now, break cover via Alan Johnson, who unsurprisingly blames Russia. Also worth noting has been the Henry Jackson Society's response.

Finally, Sarah Churchwell reviews Snuff by Palahniuk, and is far more damning than I was.

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8/17/2008 12:01:00 AM | | | links to this post

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