Question Time

Dear David,

I support you in the BBC's decision to accept Nick Griffin on to Question Time. Only in a public forum where sensible debate is held can we hope to destroy the hate-filled claims of the BNP.

I support neither Labour nor the Conservatives. Yet I know that both parties have a range of talented parliamentarians who, through the subtlety of their argument, will be able to rip into the BNP's message more effectively than the bottles thrown by the UAF hope to achieve.

(In this case, Baroness Warsi and Jack Straw are good choices - however I would like to see Bob Marshall Andrews because he'd turn Griffin into mincemeat!)

The BNP now have European seats. They need to be dealt with head on - on our terms (sensible debate), rather than theirs (violence and protests - doesn't this feed their propaganda machine?). My passionate hope it that Griffin and his party are made to look like a bunch of fools on Question Time. And I think they will be. Their arguments rest on suspicion and lies, and this is no substitute for what is right and good.

If we defeat them honestly with WORDS Griffin et al can no longer claim that they are the victim of a Liberal Conspiracy - rather, he will be a victim of the TRUTH! Surely the party will then lose its raison d’etre.

At present I do not believe that the Unite Against Fascism gets to the shaky heart of the BNP's message. Yes, protests are effective but to what extent do they challenge the party's policies? This should be very easy to do on television.

Mug the BNP of their right to free speech and we may have no reason to distrust them. Allow them to speak, and in the words of JS Mill, 'truth will prevail'.

'I may not agree with what you have to say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it'
Voltaire



Craig Owen
Writing in relation to a request made by ‘Hope not Hate’
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/index.php

PS - I really do hope you send this guys

Vote for a Change (rather than moan about the Tories?)

Today I went to a meeting chaired by ‘Vote for a Change’ at the Friend’s Meeting House in Manchester; a mere stones throw away from the Tory party conference at the G-Mex. I first came across this group when my 6th formers hijacked a protest organised by themselves and Peter Tatchell on College Green in Westminster. The group has two aims – 1. To replace the ‘first past the post’ electoral system with one that is more democratic, accountable and breaks apart the majoritarianism of British politics, and 2. Bring about a revolution in British politics in the wake of the expenses scandal. Delegates want to see an end to the so-called ‘Westminster Gravy Train’ and a return to real MP accountability.

Daniel Hannan, for example, argued that at the moment MPs in safe seats (he calls them “modern ‘pocket boroughs’”) are accountable only to whips who can have them deselected at election time should they fail to ‘toe the party line’. He argued for the abolition of safe seats (i.e., other PPCs can challenge you to your candidature) and for Primaries (recently trailed by the Tories in Totnes) to be rolled out across the country.

The associate editor of the New Statesman, whose name I forget, argued vociferously against Primaries by pointing out that the Totnes experiment cost £38,000, a sum that the Tory party isn’t likely to want to spend again. He also poured cold water on any hopes of the Conservative party cleaning up politics if and when they are elected. He said that the party came out worst from the expenses scandal and Cameron meted out punishments according to individuals’ usefulness to the ‘government in waiting’. In other words, backbenchers like Steen were forced to fall on their sword whilst not one member of the front bench was disciplined. Only Alan Duncan lost his job when he was recorded saying that MPs were forced to live on rations. Needless to say, Duncan is a millionaire.

Martin Bell, another speaker in this incredibly diverse bank of speakers (I can’t imagine that these people have all been in the same room together ever before) said that Labour won in 1997 off the back of Tory sleaze and have spent the best part of the last 12 years managing to replicate many of the Tory misdeeds. John Strafford holds a role within the Chairmanship of the Tory Party (I can’t remember which) and he actually impressed me most. He offered a convincing and accurate argument against the FPTP (when many in his own party are happy to keep it as it is – after all, it will probably return them to government next year) and seemed upbeat about the prospects for change, at least until Mr. Hassan (New Statesman) ‘urinated on his bonfire’. Lewis Baston of the Electoral Reform Society said that bribery and disenchantment were nothing new in politics, the only difference was that today the two parties have a lot less support that they used to enjoy – nevertheless, power still swaps between these two elites in our democratically questionable majoritarian system.

Polly Toynbee chaired proceedings. She did a brilliant job of appearing impartial despite the musings of Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP and darling of the American right wing media for his statements that he ‘wouldn’t wish the NHS on anyone’. I hadn’t expected this to come up – we were having a debate about political renewal after all, and it seemed as though Hannan was reasonably articulate in his observations of our political system and offered a few decent arguments, albeit without much support from the left leaning members of the panel, Hassan, Toynbee et al.

And then something happened which made me think ‘right, Labour have really lost the election’. A member of Manchester Young Labour sitting behind me (who I’d recognised from our meeting with the Health Secretary) asked when proceedings were opened up to the floor if there’s any real choice next year when members of one party come out with spurious comments such as Hannan’s on the NHS. I had a problem with this for several reasons:

1. Hannan’s recent notoriety is down to his irksome views on national health, However, that’s not why he was there – he was talking about changing the political system and was making some reasonably decent points (for a hard right Tory MEP)
2. The girl who asked the question showed her disdain for Hannan by playing with her phone and not looking up when she was asking the question and during his answer.

MYL clearly came to the meeting with the intention of scoring some political points despite the fact that ‘Vote for a Change’ had aimed to have a frank and nonpartisan discussion about our broken political system. One of the things that has persuaded me that active involvement in the Labour party is perhaps ‘not my thing’ is that I’m getting increasingly pissed off by those annoying minor apparatchiks who are so wedded to the party, so blindly faithful to everything it stands for that they end up criticising everyone but themselves. What the young lady hoped to achieve by asking an off topic question at a public meeting is open to debate. Labour needs to question its own record – it has been in power for 12 years now. There are still those who prefix every sentence with ‘Before 1997…’ We need to start talking about ‘Since 1997…’ Numerous commentators, including Toynbee, argue that Labour is crap at talking about its successes. Even the Spectator is so confident of a Tory victory that it has started to talk about the good stuff that Blair did. However, to return to this little stunt in the Friend’s Meeting House, it represented in microcosmic form everything that has become so pathetic about the Labour party. It is tantamount to a KO’d boxer blithely still trying to throw limp wristed punches when flat on his back on the canvas because he has to be seen to be still putting up a fight. It was ill-informed, pointless and depressing to hear for people like me who like to think that there is life in the old dog yet. Labour needs a cleansing period out of office, that’s when groups like MYL will really come into its own and, I hope, find the ability to attack the Tories on less superficial lines.

That being said, the Vote for a Change meeting was interesting and informative. Conservative party conference in Manchester? Next Ethiopia will be hosting Live Aid for us….

Why I won't lose sleep over The Sun's political alliegence

The Sun is like a chameleon. Just like this creature changes its colours to match surroundings, this 'news'paper changes its stripes to match the political landscape. Indeed, whatever claim that the paper had in being able to dictate public opinion has now clearly gone. Today it merely follows in the wake of the changing tide, dutifully preaching to an already converted majority.

In 1992, The Sun famously printed the headline 'If this man [Kinnock] is elected tomorrow, will the last person to leave Britain please turn off the light?' In 1997, they switched sides with the notably less imaginative headline 'The Sun backs Blair!' and yesterday it claimed that 'Labour's lost us'. The paper loves to back a winner, in fact I'm sure that it's written in the paper's rule book that it has to pick the right time before any election when the outcome can be reasonably predicted to choose its party. Incredibly unprincipled I know, but this is a paper which is blatantly homophobic, ruins lives by referring to people as 'paedos' before they are convicted of any offence and contributes no end to Islamophobia and other types of xenophobia. You've got to ask yourself why any well meaning party would want to support of this toilet paper?

For a long time the answer has been clear. The Murdoch-owned paper is one of Britain's most read dailies. Its simple language makes it accesible to the almost anyone (I think the required reading age is about 7) and, yes, it has an uncanny abiity to predict election winners. I wonder why that is! Unfortunately for the Sun, however, its ability to control public opinion is on the wane. The age of 24 hour news coverage and the internet has seriously reduced its impact. No well meaning individual would go to their website for their daily dose of news. All newspapers are suffering, however it seems that The Sun's illiberal, bawdy and tawdry sensations are particularly out of kilter with the modern consensus. The internet has given us the ability to blog about issues such as this. The Sun no longer controls the agenda or seems to sum up the public mood (as it did with 'Gotcha' http://barorny.com/archives/gotcha1.jpg), it trails in its wake.

Yesterday, Cabinet members were rightfully angry, not about the switch, but rather The Sun's cruel timing. It took the limelight from a buoyant and promising Labour conference. That's all the paper can do nowadays - pick the right time. After all, it has lost its 'voice of the nation' moniker. By getting in bed with an old Etonian it has proved itself to be one of society's biggest hypocrites. Watch out Dave, give it a few years and you'll be splashed across the front page when the party has had enough of you - or smells another winner...it never fails to back one you know!