Coverage of Jersey in the press

Richard Webster's blog inlcudes an interesting discussion of the treatment of the 'murder inquiry that wasn't' in last week's press. He pertinently points out that

...the invocation of evil is too often used to justify all manner of shortcomings on the part of those who crusade against it. Because, in our own culture, we seem to have adopted child abuse as our ultimate evil, the assumption is frequently made that actions which are less than entirely scrupulous can be justified so long as they are aimed at defeating this evil.

While the conspiracy theorists are letting rip about cover-ups and the like, it is perhaps pointing out one more plausible explanation for the nature and timing of the police's announcment. A couple of weeks ago the Jersey Evening Post reported that defence lawyers for the two people so far charged as a result of the child abuse inquiry were arguing that their clients could not get a fair trial because of the media publicity about the case.

Perhaps the police hope that by separating the specific evidence in individual cases from the falsehoods of the 'House of horrors' media sensation they are more likely to achieve successful prosecutions in those cases where there is compelling evidence of abuse. Whichever way, the tactics adopted by Lenny Harper and his supporters have probably hindered rather than helped the victims of abuse and reduced the likelihood of bringing abusers to justice.

Jersey revelations should come as no surprise

At Spiked online and on his own blog, Richard Webster points out that the conclusions of Jersey police's recent statement 'could in fact have been reached by any journalist who had sceptically studied the evidence about Haut de la Garenne already in the public domain'.

Webster was of course responsible for exposing the falsehood of the police's original claim that a child's skull had been found at the former children's home.

I hope to post at greater length on this issue (when I get around to it, as the saying is), but suffice to say for now that given the horror we all feel about child abuse and the sensitivity needed to investigate it, it's best if the police don't go out of their way to encourage media sensationalism on the basis of (at best) suspect information.

Prescott, privilege and class prejudice

I have just finished watching the first part of John Prescott’s programme about class. Although it was at times both fascinating and quite moving, in the end I find Prescott’s chip on his shoulder about class, his visceral resentment of anyone who appears too posh or privileged, hard to sympathise with.

This was particularly so at the moment when he began sounding off at a teenage lad at the Henley Regatta who went to a private school. It turned out that the young man had two-thirds of his fees paid by the state because his father was in the army, at which point Prescott demanded to know why the government paid for the education of officers but not of other ranks. To which the obvious answer is ‘Well you tell us that John. You were in government for 10 years and in a better position than most to change it and you didn’t. You were the one with the power, not the young man you were berating.’

Prescott’s bête noir Simon Hoggart, who regularly made fun of the way the former deputy prime minister tortures the English language, is certainly not the archetypal toff that Prescott seems to imagine. His father, Richard Hoggart, may have been a university lecturer, but he grew up as a working class boy in Leeds and his most famous book The Uses of Literacy is a discussion of working class culture. I have heard Hoggart père speak (he received an honorary degree when I graduated from Leicester University many moons ago) and he doesn’t sound any posher than Prescott.

I suppose part of my irritation with Prescott is that I entirely lack the strong class affiliations that he has. I could with equal accuracy describe my antecedents as middle class (or at least petit bourgeois) business people or working-class factory hands. I could portray my own upbringing either as a privileged existence at prestigious private schools or a difficult one spent living on council estates and attending evening classes at a further education colleage to get into university. Whichever way, I am automatically suspicious of anyone who too obviously wears their class loyalty on their sleeve or who appears to judge people according to class.

One prejudice I do confess to, though, is against people who boast of not reading books, as Prescott appeared to do at one point in the programme. This is not something I have picked up from a supposedly privileged education, but from my four grandparents, and in particular from my maternal grandmother who left school aged about 13 virtually illiterate, yet whose voracious reading habits in the course of a long life have taken in most of the great works of literature. She has always taken a particularly dim view of people who can read but don’t.

Perhaps if Prescott had spent more time reading and less time talking he wouldn’t mangle the English language so much, and it is this latter point that is what really seems to bother him. Interestingly, it emerged that Prescott grew up in a private, semi-detached house and came from a rather less deprived background than that of his wife Pauline. Yet Mrs Prescott now speaks with a less pronounced accent than her husband.

Which puts me in mind of the story told about Henry Kissinger’s elder brother, who had entirely lost the distinctive Austrian accent that was so marked in his younger sibling. When asked why this was, the brother commented, ‘Unlike Henry, I listen to other people’. It would be unfair to say this was wholly true of Prescott. His meetings with the three unemployed young women from London revealed his genuine concern for the poor, an ability listen and to communicate with them on their level. But Prescott clearly judges people according to his perception of which class they belong to, and this is something I find unsavoury from whichever direction it comes. Perhaps that is one reason why I am a Liberal and not a socialist (or, for that matter, Tory.)

Why do Watford Conservatives refuse to condemn Ian Oakley?

This week’s Watford Observer states that the Chairman of Watford Conservative Association, Steve O’Brien, has refused to comment after former Conservative parliamentary candidate Ian Oakley received a suspended prison sentence having admitted 75 charges of harassment and criminal damage.

I have commented before about the bizarre silence of Watford Conservatives over the whole Oakley affair. The most charitable, albeit unlikely, explanation was that they were waiting for the whole legal process to be complete. Now there can be no excuse.

Just to be clear – there has been no official comment by Watford Conservatives on Oakley’s arrest, resignation, conviction or sentencing. They have not condemned Oakley’s offences, not expressed regret that these acts should have been committed by such a senior Conservative and not expressed sympathy with his victims.

There can now be no innocent explanation for the silence of Watford Conservatives. For avoidance of doubt, I refer to those who are in charge of the local Conservative Association. I am sure that ordinary Conservative supporters and members in Watford and elsewhere do indeed abhor what Oakley has done.

The official Watford Conservatives’ silence suggests ambivalence about the whole affair. It implies that they are not really sorry that Oakley did what he did, believe that at some level the Lib Dems deserved it and are not willing to condemn the criminal behaviour of a Conservative if there is any danger that this will give comfort to the Lib Dems.

The Conservatives no doubt believe, perhaps rightly, that the media attention has passed and the story will soon be forgotten about. But questions remain about Watford Conservatives, foremost among which are: what is their real attitude to using criminal methods for political advantage? and why do they feel unable to condemn Ian Oakley’s actions?

Until such questions are answered, Watford Conservatives will rightly remain tainted by the suspicion that they tacitly condone Oakley’s behaviour.

Is this Brown's Darlington?

Older readers will remember how in 1983 Labour's unexpectedly good result in the Darlington by-election extinguished any threat to Michael Foot's leadership, leaving him free to lead the party to its disastrous general election defeat in the same year.

The broadly positive reaction to Gordon Brown's speech at the Labour conference in Manchester might just about have saved his skin too - although Ruth Kelly's resignation won't help Brown.

As with 1983, the problem now is both about the leader and the party - changing leaders now might do some good but not much. Back then, if Dennis Healey had taken over as leader, he might have saved a few Labour seats, but not much more. The scale of the Foot disaster probably helped to make the more sensible members of the party realise that things had to change.

I note that back in 2006 this blog pointed out the many negative precedents for lieutenants taking over from long-serving and electorally-successful party leaders. Rosebery, Balfour and James Callaghan and Alec Douglas-Hume all led their parties to catastrophic defeats, Neville Chamberlain never got as far as a general election. Anthony Eden and John Major who did win general elections are hardly happy precedents either.

So the odds were always against a successful Brown premiership. Let's face it, if Brown had been good enough, he would have been chosen ahead of Blair in 2004 - he was older, more experienced and had greater intellectual depth. The fact that those who dreamed of New Labour New Britain went for Blair not Brown was an unequivocal vote of no confidence. Elevating Brown to the top job was a bit like a football team replacing a top striker with a dependable centre half.

The problem, however, is not just one of leadership. Despite fears among the political classes about the fickleness of the electorate, in fact at five of the last six general elections they have re-elected the governing party. This, too, is unprecedented. In the previous six elections, the incumbent government won just twice, and these - 1966 and October 1974 were snap elections called while Labour were still in honeymoon periods.

Of course, for much of the last 30 years the party in power has faced an official opposition that looked unconvincing, if not impossible, as a party of government. If we return to a period when both Labour and the Conservatives inspire doubt and confidence in equal measure then we are likely to see changes of power happen more regularly.

So Labour are probably best advised to stick with the devil they know. Brown has probably earned the right on the basis of past service to lead the party into the next election. One can't help feeling that the electoral tide has now turned against Labour and they will have to accept their coming defeat with dignity and try to regroup in opposition.

At least, that's what I would probably conclude were I a member of the Labour party. But of course I'm not, but rather a Lib Dem campaigner in a marginal seat where we are hoping to unseat a Labour MP. So instead, I will hope for the anti-Brown campaign to gather pace, a messy act of regicide, continuing bitterness and bad feeling, leading to catastrophic defeat and the ultimate replacement of Labour by the Lib Dems as the main alternative to the Tories.

Whichever way, it's time to get delivering those leaflets.

A lament for the end of Julian Clary's column in the New Statesman

Recently Jonathan Calder joked about expecting dismissal as New Statesman online columnist for being spotted by the editor carrying a copy of the Daily Mail at conference.

At least I assumed it was a joke. But now I wonder. For I read in this week's magazine that Julian Clary has been relieved of his column (that sounds uncomfortably close to a double entendre) by the Staggers' powers that be. Of course since his piece is humourous, it could be a joke and Clary has just decided he's had enough. But my antennae are always twitching as to whether the NS will retain its sense of humour.

Back in the 1980s it was virtually unreadable - a steady diet of left-wing politics, unleavened by humour or light relief of any kind. So, despite its right-wing leanings, I became a Spectator reader.

A few years ago, however, I changed loyalties and took out a subscription to the Staggers having begun to find the Spectator too conventional in its right-wingery, while the NS seemed to have rediscovered its lighter side, stopped taking itself too seriously and engaged an eclectic range of contributors. Not everyone liked its use of comedians as columnists (This Week - Kelly Monteith on the US Presidential Elections), but both Julian Clary has really been very good at doing humour for a serious readership (as has Shazia Mirza whose column appeared on alternate weeks from Clary's).

Now I'm worried that the humourous bits of the magazine will be given over to worthy articles by Polly Toynbee or Jackie Ashley and their like and the magazine will become unbearable for all who don't spend their whole lives dreaming up schemes to organise the poor. Fortunately, if that does turn out to be the case, my subscription is due shortly and I can always decide not to renew. But let's hope not! I have got to like the Staggers over the years and feel that reading it is a kind of insurance policy against developing excessively right-wing views as I advance further into middle age.

Frank Luntz - an apology

Liberal Democrat bloggers may have in the past given the impression that they consider American pollster Frank Luntz as a wholly inappropriate person to be used by the BBC because of his clear right-wing bias.

In fact we now realise that Mr Luntz is a wholly impartial expert, with an unrivalled insight into the popular appeal of political leaders.