Category: Current Affairs

Ron Suskind, quoted at William Gibson’s blog offers a startling view of the current administration’s effect on the world.

Simon Hoggart‘s parliamentary sketch yesterday (which is not yet online) referred to a long-forgotten Lincolnshire MP from the 1830s and 40s. He was a perfect picture of the Tory grandee – opposing the railways, the expansion of education (because he had hated reading at Oxford) and the Great Exhibition (because it would attract foreigners to the country). Will it be 170 years until the views of some modern politicians are the topic for sketchwriters’ derision?

The reference comes from Anthony Seldon and Peter Snowdon’s new history of the Conservative Party. An article by Mr Seldon on the future prospects of the Tories can be found here.

From Brussels, an example of the way the Italians think about the EU.

The BBC reports that the Italian Prime Minister’s nominee for Justice Commissioner, Rocco Buttiglione, has been rejected in a non-binding vote by the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament. Mr Buttiglione had previously expressed the personal view that homosexuality is a sin.

In some countries (France and Britain spring to mind), this would be met by wounded pride and affronted dignity. In Italy, while Mr Berlusconi’s office fumed, the opposition’s reaction was to point to how Mr Berlusconi was damaging Italy’s credibility in the EU. An Italian gay rights group said:

“We are pleased and reassured by the decision: the Vatican’s backyard ends at the Alps”

Is this concern with European opinion a sign that Italy has a mature appreciation for its place in a post-nationalistic Europe? Or is it (as I believe it is) a sign that the country is still suffering from “political cringe” when it comes to the rest of the EU?

Following the NYT’s profile of John Kerry, the New Yorker has a fascinating profile of President Bush.

Don’t like banging your head against that brick wall? Why not try banging it even harder?

The BBC reports that the Metropolitan Police have backed a campaign to have the drinking age in Hampstead raised to 21. Their article (in their slightly frothy magazine section) quotes “psychologist Colin Drummond” in support of a general move in that direction, and reasonable noises from Alcohol Concern and the Portman Group in opposition. The reason – having the limit at 18 isn't preventing people under 18 from drinking.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that this ban has absolutely no chance of ever being enacted (18 year olds can vote, after all), and it’s a lovely case study of how failing legislation can be pushed into failing harder by people who can’t think outside the box.

Incidentally, I used to live near Hampstead, and something tells me that any ban is probably related more to the socio-economic group of its inhabitants rather than its non-existent status as party capital of North London.

Jimmy Swaggart has threatened to kill any man who looks at him funny. Are you callin’ uz a poof?

Today the House of Commons votes on the banning of hunting with hounds – the fox hunting ban. The arguments on both sides have been rehearsed ad nauseam over the last few years, and the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance are currently (early evening) winding up a large rally in front of Parliament, protesting at the ban.

The Government have said that if the House of Lords reject the ban – as seems likely, given their previous record on this issue – that they will force through the ban by means of the Parliament Act.

Fox-hunting (and farming and countryside issues more generally) have been taken up strongly by the Tory press, notably the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. The irresponsible end of that spectrum, the Mail and the Express, have used this issue as another example of the perfidy of Labour’s crypto-communist campaign against all that is good and holy about British society. The leftish press, particularly the Guardian, have presented it as the last hurrah of the landed Establishment.

The class colouring of the debate is misleading, however. For the people who are going to vote on it this evening, it seems mostly to be a matter of animal welfare versus the right of people to carry on doing what they have always done. For all the rhetoric of the Mail, that something has always been done is no reason why it shouldn’t be stopped.

We shall see what happens when the ban comes into force, which may be several years away. The Countryside Alliance promises widespread civil unrest, and (echoing the Sinn Fein of old) insist that anything bad that happens will be the Government’s responsibility. Noteworthy was one small incident from the paranoid fringes: the leg of an electricity pylon in Cumbria was sawn through by a group calling itself the Real Countryside Alliance – a name echoing the Real IRA, and hence facile and offensive at the same time.

Are we going to see a rebellion of the Establishment? If so, when is the Prime Minister going to declare victory over the scattered forces of conservatism?

Update: It’s already begun!

The European Environment Agency has produced a report on what the continent can expect from climate change over the next few years.

Oh God no – not again. The publication of Greg Dyke’s autobiography (serialised in the Observer) has reignited the ongoing war over who said what and meant what during the build-up to the Iraq war.

For my part – not that it matters much – I remember the general opinion at the time was that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. Dyke’s apparent belief that the 45 minute claim was the only thing that took Britain to war is wrong at best, disingenuous at worst. True, the 45 minute thing made a few headlines, but it was not a point that turned the argument for war in Blair’s favour.

But the wider issue here is the futility of reopening this endless debate. Even the BBC’s news reporters have acknowledged this in recent weeks, saying in most reports that “people will have already made up their minds.” There are, perhaps, a few people who still think there are important issues to be decided. The majority, though, will surely have either marked Blair up or down on Iraq a long time ago. Even to a politics fan like me, the smoke and fumes surrounding the Iraq war are now so impenetrable that nothing useful can be discerned inside them. When – eventually – they clear, we will no doubt see nothing but a lot of people, all with shotgun wounds in their feet.