Tweeting truth

I want to gripe again. My question is this. When do you ever hear what a politician really thinks?

 

Cartoon from Cartoon Stock

Maybe Donald Trump’s tweets are genuinely his thoughts. But if they are, then where do his more reasonable speeches come from? Are they really what he thinks and wants? Or are they what his speech-writers reckon will go down well with his audience at the time? Certainly his minders minded when in the early days he strayed off-script. And it’s probable that they now also try to vet his tweets, with limited success it must be said.

Meanwhile on our side of the pond it’s fairly obvious that our prime ministers don’t have the time to write the host of speeches they choose to deliver every week. One imagines that their party minders, the ones who pre-brief on coming speeches, suggest a promising topic as well as a crowd or party pleasing line; the PM chooses it and the speech writers produce it for her to deliver. And so we have the curious phenomenon of shifting policy arguments stated with all the conviction of a university debating chamber.

How I long for a politician whom one knows where they stand! And I don’t think I am alone. I suspect the perceived straightforwardness of Jeremy Corbyn accounted for the unexpected success of Labour at the last general election, and the beautifully articulate rigidity of the honourable member for the 18^th century, Jacob Rees-Mogg, explains similarly his unaccountable and regrettable popularity among certain circles. Even the wily Father of the House, Ken Clarke, remains consistent  at the expense of his colleagues falling asleep.

There is, it seems, a struggle between politicians of convenience and politicians on conviction. Sadly often those with political aspirations start off with conviction but the pressures of expediency and the pursuit of power soon squeeze them into the mould of convenience.

It would be nice to believe that a good interviewer might elicit the truth from a politician. But of course the party machines have that awful possibility covered as well. Their representatives are intensively trained in interview technique, which we recognise all too well. It seems to boil down to, “Don’t answer the question asked. Have a sound bite and repeat it at every opportunity. Above all, stay on message.” In my view, the adversarial nature of the interviewing game has done nothing for honest politics. Belligerent interviewers such as John Humphrys simply produce defensive politicians.

 

E B Herbert, The Fox Hunt

Let me add one thing. I’m not blaming politicians more than anyone else. The rest of us have a mob mentality, like a pack of hounds led by journalists on their high horses, seeking out any weaknesses and hunting down our prey to their political extinction. We relish the chase. Perhaps if we respected our politicians more, who are entrusted with a huge responsibility on our behalf, we might receive the respect of their honesty in return.

So, meanwhile, are Donald Trump’s tweets the nearest we will get to knowing the honest views of a politician? If this is as good as it gets, how sad.

British Blame Culture

A lot of awful things have been in the news since I last blogged, so much so that I have, unusually, resorted to turning off the news from time to time. There's been Gaza, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and close to home Rotherham. In different ways they are all horrific.

What has struck me in much of the news coverage and comment is how prevalent is the culture of seeking to attach blame. This morning yet again John Humphrys of the Today Programme was belabouring his interviewee (a representative of local authorities) about the sexual abuse of under-age girls in Rotherham. "There must be someone to blame" was his repeated point. He wanted his interviewee to agree that local council officers (like police officers and like Shaun Wright, the councillor responsible for children's services) should be "punished". Humphrys seemed to want a few scapegoats, a few heads to roll. However as history tells us, scapegoats may make people feel better, but they don't ever solve the problem.

He clearly had failed to hear Kier Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, yesterday, who pointed out that what was wrong in Rotherham, and no doubt, in many other communities across the UK was a matter of culture, but in this case a culture of disbelief of certain sorts of youngsters, and of young people in general. A culture is a shared responsibility, a communal one. An exceptional individual may stand against the prevailing tide, but unless the community, across the generations, in all sectors, stands with them the tide will not change. In the meantime we simply avoid the issue and evade our own complicity by blaming a few (or many) individuals. The fault also lies in ourselves. 

I confess I'm not immune from the blame-game myself. On an entirely trivial level I found myself fulminating against the "unfairness" of the eviction of Iain Watters from the Great British Bake Off, after his gloriously original baked alaska had been removed from the freezer by another of the bakers and thus ruined. He binned it! Actually one learns now that there was a certain amount of manipulation in the editing to elicit just such a response. It makes, of course, for "better" TV and higher viewer ratings.

With the unethical exclusive stake-out by the BBC when South Yorkshire Police raided Cliff Richard's Berkshire apartment, and the publishing of his name before charge, one wonders whether the BBC has lost sight of its ideals in the pursuit of populist appeal. Has it become the British Blame Corporation? 

Might it not be a good idea to stop the blame game? Let's stop saying Gaza was Israel's fault, Ukraine was Putin's fault, Iraq is ISIS's fault, that the state of education was Michael Gove's (or teachers') fault and the NHS Michael Lansley's (or nurses') fault. As Lewis Hamilton has wisely written on his Facebook page, following the incident when Nico Rosberg took him out at the Belgian Grand Prix: "Nico and I accept that we have both made mistakes and I feel it would be wrong to point fingers and say which one is worse than the other...."