Punters unimpressed by early election talk
December 29th, 2004
The recent speculation that Tony Blair is thinking of a snap election in the first quarter of the year has had no impact on the betting markets.
The price on the election being in the April-June period of 2005 has barely moved from the 1/6 to 1/5 region and you can still get 15/2 on the poll being before March 31st.
In a good analysis of the election date options the Independent columnist and former Tory MP, Michael Brown observes today :- The downside is that this early date might deprive the Government of holding a pre-election budget of goodies on the eve of the formal campaign. Budgets are usually held in the second or third week of March. This would not be possible if Parliament had already been dissolved. But if there is a budget on 2 March (notice of this would be given some weeks ahead), be on your guard for an announcement, immediately afterwards, of an election on 31 March. Remember that, in 1992, John Major dissolved Parliament 48 hours after an early March budget. I do not expect this to happen. However, if it does, you read it here first.
Brown also notes that Harold Wilson held the 1996 General Election on March 31st and Labour was returned with a 100 majority. Such a date this time would mean that the impact of the student vote might be reduced because it would be the vacation and Charles Kennedy would be deprived of the expected campaign boost from the birth of his first child.
A complication of such a date might be that the fact Easter in 2005 is just about as early as it can be with Easter Day being on March 27th.
Blair has shown that he likes holding more than one election on the same day and it is hard to see him not following the same pattern and having the General Election on May 5th - the date set for the County Council elections.
But it does no harm for him to keep everybody guessing.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
“Such a date this time would mean that the impact of the student vote might be reduced because it would be the vacation”
What impact, its hardly as though the Students in 1997 where keen on the Labour Party after tuition fees and plenty of talk was heard about how this would hurt Labour but it didn’t hell Mandy Telford was elected NUS President and that was after tuition fees… students won’t change a single seat IMHO and very very few will even vote.
As for February Poll it wouldn’t happen IMHO… it probably going to be May there is too much to potentially be gained from waiting till May rather than holding it in February, if the contest where held in Feb it would suggest the Government is not confident at all and would also mean that the local elections would no doubt be pretty bad without the national coattails that a general election would give Labour councillors.
Que?
The mood among students in 1997 (hey, I was one!) was largely that it was worth voting for Blair to get rid of the Tories. That isn’t going to hold in 2005. (Though I agree with you broadly Ben on student turnout. There is a big, apathetic silent majority, which is why as you said on another thread Trots tend to do well in NUS elections - a small number on the left make most of the noise.
Ben, do you mean that if Blair went in February it would fuel speculation that horrible economic news is in the pipeline before May?
I would tend to agree with that. Lib Dems and Tories would inevitably say that a February election means tax rises in Brown’s budget in March. That is a difficult charge to answer whether or not there is any truth in it - a straight denial will not do it as trust is too low.
Could students swing Cambridge or Norwich?
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the student vote, its importance is hugely over-estimated by this site. Brown’s column in The Independent today was nothing more than idle conjecture. The election will be on 05/05/05 and will yield a Labour majority of around 115. That’s all you really need to know.
Re. 1, I agree it’s far more likely to be May, Ben. On the other hand, I think students will be even more fed up than they were with Labour in 01, what with top-up fees (rubbing salt into the original wound) and Iraq.
I can meet you half-way on the impact (or lack of it) made by students. The Tories were certainly helped in 92 through the vacation-induced absence of students in marginals such as Norwich North (though they’d still have retained at least a single figure majority even if the students had cost them a handful of the eleven marginals on which their majority rested). I also remember plenty of students voting at the university polling station in 97 (though, as the university was in a safe Labour seat, it didn’t make all that much difference) and even posters in the windows in halls.
On the other hand, the presence of (mainly Labour-voting) students in Nottingham South didn’t cost the Tories the seat in 83 or 87, and the absence of them didn’t stop Labour winning the seat in 92.
Ironically, what really helped the Tories in the eleven key marginals on which their 92 overall majority rested was not so much the absence of students, as the absence of many Labour voters from the register, thanks to the poll tax. In all eleven seats, the Tory majority is outweighed by the number of voters who left the register.
Thus the Tories got the best of both worlds - they didn’t take much punishment (except in north-western marginals such as Stockport and Pendle) for the poll tax, after having abolished it, but they benefitted from the disappearance of (mostly) Labour voters from the register.
Whereas, had Thatcher and the poll tax stayed in place, the Tories would have lost (with Labour as the largest party in a hung parliament). Thatcher was more unpopular than Kinnock, the poll tax would have at least partially cancelled out the Tory attack on Labour tax rises, Thatcher was blamed for the recession (as Major was not), and there’d have been a much stronger ‘time for a change feeling’ (whereas, after Thatcher went, it felt as if there’d been a change of government without an election). I well remember a school trip to London in the Summer of 1990 where two Tory friends of mine stood by the (recently erected) gates of Downing Street and commented ruefully that the ‘ginger-haired git’ would be living there soon.
Georgie
Norwich South is not going to go anywhere, the student vote is very apathetic (I spent a term at UEA and still have lots of friends back there) by far the largest leftwing alternative to Labour in the seat is the Greens who have been growing in strength in recent years and they are easily bigger than the Conservatives, Labour (if its still ratified) and the LDs combined at the UEA… While most politically active students on the campus are anti-Clark they are the minority and the vast majority are apathetic and even those who are not apathetic are, for the most part, registered back home.
An indicator of the lack of impact top-up fees has had on the political scene for most students at UEA is the demo against them in 2003 where 50 people tuned up compared with 800 the year before… lazy bastards!
Cambridge no doubt has a more politically active student body but as with Norwich South or indeed any seat with a large student population Labour are not going to lose many student voters to Iraq and Top-Up Fees who didn’t already abandon the party over Tuition Fees, granted they will lose some more of these student voters but by and large the damage has already been done. While the Labour Majority will be reduced (I personally think it will be down to the 5,000 mark) I don’t think the LDs can take the seat (and some will disagree a lot with me on that) and any reduction in Labour’s majority will have little to do with Student voters but instead will be down to the GMW angry primarily about Iraq, Public Services reform, etc…
So of the two Cambridge is the only seat where the LDs have a hope of doing notably better than in 2001 (however as I said I don’t think they’ll win the seat this time) but the LD improvement in Cambridge on what ever scale will not be down to students.
Similarly, Cambridge went Labour in 92 despite the vacation-induced absence of students, due largely to the loss of Sir Robert Rhodes James’ personal vote (though the Tory candidate, Mark Bright, was cut from the same centrist, One Nation Tory, cloth), the LD vote plunging in the absence of Shirley Williams (who stood there in 87), and the concerns of the general Cambridge voter (which included the public sector middle-class and intellectual middle-class) about the Major government’s policies.
With Easter being the weekend before 31st March, and therefore it being during a week when many people would be out of the country, this would clearly ahve an adverse impact on turnout. Difficult to see who would be most badly affected.
Elections in individual seats are won by taking EVERY ‘constituency’ seriously. You will never know for certain where exactly you are viz-a-viz your main opponent during the last days of a hard fought campaign. So then if you win by 5000 you shrug your shoulders at that ‘unneccessary work’ you put in. And when you lose by 32 you say “Maybe we should have bothered a bit more with the students”!
What is the GMW?
Is it people with BDS? (Google “Bush Derangement Syndrome” for more info).
Ron…
GMW = Guardian man and woman, not sure how GMW arouse but someone credited men with the “GMW” abbreviation and who am i to quibble
Could anyone please try and cut and paste the Michael Brown article on here as you have to pay subscription to read it on the website
This is where i meant to post it.
Ben - I’d love to oblige but having already spent 60p on the paper this morning i don;t want to spend another £1 retrieving it for here
The gist of it was that the futures of Blair, Brown and Howard are in Kennedy’s hands, and that with polling around 38% Lab, 35% Tory and 22% LD, you could see any result from a hing parliament to a 100 seat Labour majority, none of which is news to anyone here. The only point he made that you may disagree with were that the LD election boost was likely to be around 5% or so (no discussion that they may already have the publicity they require).
Cheers Steve…. I do wish the commentators would catch up; we’re at least a couple of months ahead of some of them
Ben - I think this site should be required reading for any political commentator
I have a friend who works on the Telegraph but he’s in consumer affairs - I’ll ask him to apss it ont o his mates, although judging by Monday’s article they’re already in the know.
We’re already known on both left and right of the journalistic spectrum, anyway, what with mentions from Cohen (Observer) and Trefgarne (Telegraph).
If Nick Palmer is our first declared MP, who are the non-declared MPs here?
Richard, I don’t know a lot about Tregarne but I have a lot of repsect for Cohen, who is not afraid to challenge the prejudices of his readers (he did a great piece on the hypocracy inherent in the middle classes who favour selection by property prices rather than selection by examination, for example, which probably had many “Hampstead Liberals” spluttering into their cornflakes on a Sunday morning!). However, whether by requirement or design many commentators seem not to let the facts get in the way of their own viewpoint, or that of the readers to whom they are catering.
Richard
Perhaps Jenny Tong is lurking about in the from of Zebidee
Yes, I like Cohen for the same reason, particularly when (like Francis Wheen) he’s always ready to challenge the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ mentality of some on the left (which usually translates into ‘America is always wrong, therefore any enemy of the US must be alright’).
Intriguingly, he’s challenging the received wisdom that Labour will win the next GE easily (see the latest issue of the New Statesman) at the same time as he’s (unusually for him) conceding that the government has done some good work.
Re 21, I think you may well be right, Ben!
Jenny Tong or Pete Tong?
“I’d like to big it up for the Lib Dem massive …!
Until I see a paean to Hamas from zebidee, I’ll give him/her the benefit of the doubt.
Richard, Nick Cohen has been lurking here recently. I’ve just read the article, and the following statement culled from it shows he didn’t waste his time here:
“This isn’t to say that the Liberal Democrats will get nowhere. The conventional prediction - outlined at the top of this piece - that the party will make no gains feels all wrong. No one should be surprised if the Lib Dems come from nowhere to take, say, university constituencies with a Muslim minority, large numbers of students and Guardian-reading professionals.”
As a Manchester Guardian chap (just) it is disappointing that the grauniad doesnt seem to be giving the considered analysis that we used to get from McKie - Mike can I suggest you offer them a weekly digest of the site
When his next Observer piece is an appraisal of newsreader totty, we’ll know he’s been here too much!
If we take the Guardian principle that the LibDems need students, Guardian readers and Muslims to win, they may very well be stuck in all the constituencies that are often banded around on these threads.
re 28 - The Guardian principle is nonsense. What it does is illustrate the extra seats the Lib Dems will take ‘because’ of their substantial increase with the Muslim, Guardian and student vote. Most of its held seats are not full of such worthies and I’d bet they’ll hold on to virtually all of their current ‘held seats and add a good few from the same territory. Think about it: If you agree with the Iraq war and believe its made the world a safer place vote Tory or Tony; if you agree with ID cards vote Tory or Tony, if you agree with the introduction of tuition fees vote Tory or Tony, if you agree that people who have Alzeimers should pay for their own personal care and, as many thousands have done, lose their homes in the process to pay the bills, vote Tory or Tony. If you disagree with all the above vote Lib Dem. I could go on but points been made: A very clear ‘difference’ message which crosses far wider boundaries than suggested by the Gruniard.
Re. 25, indeed, and I’ve heard him talk up the LDs doing well in areas such as Didsbury (although he doesn’t quite make the connection with Withington - where the LDs are in second place - which has been made here).
Re. 26, maybe it’s because Seumas Milne (as comment editor) is too busy commissioning pieces from John Laughland on why Blair’s position over Sudan is motivated by oil (if any country is motivated by oil re. Sudan, it’s China, which blocks sanctions against the regime on the UN security council when the Sudanese regime sells it oil). That’s on top of the pieces defending Mugabe, Milosevic, and Lukashenka.
Still, Boris Johnson prints Laughland’s stuff in the Spectator, so Milne isn’t alone in bringing into the mainstream what used to be confined to the lunatic fringe.
Perhaps we could open a new market on inserting phrases in Nick Cohen comments pieces - spoils to be shared with the author
Richard - which seat does Disbury fall in - and is that East or West Didsbury? (I used to live in E Didsbury).
Stephen - The Liberals in Scotland had the chance to abolish tuition fees but didn’t. I see no reason why the rest of the UK is going to believe them. If the Liberals are so different from Labour why do they share power with them in Edinburgh?
Max - it’s called coalition government and its something whereby you can’t get all of your programme implemented if you don’t have a majority of the seats; you have to negotiate part of each partner’s programme. I believe they use it in somewhere called “Yerp” (scary!).
Tabman Steve - I’m well aware of what a coalition goverment is - I don’t think theres any need to be quite so patronising. My point is that it was a cenral plank of the Liberal Democrats manifesto that they said they would not compromise on. I don’t think its unreasonable for young people who voted Liberal Democrat (like myself) in 2001 to feel a bit pissed off when I see money coming out of my pay packet every month when I was assured tuition fees would be abolished. They were willing to break up the coalition if they didn’t get PR for local govt but not over the issue of fees. Its an odd set of priorities.
Max - apologies, the tone of that was more aggressive than it was meant to be (I blame 2 weeks of sleepless nghts, my 15-month old son is cutting molars :(). Point taken.
Re. 31, Didsbury is in Withington (looking at the Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies, the ward is simply listed as Didsbury, so presumably it consists of both West and East).
I like your idea of a market for the insertion of phrases. There are quite a few people here who deserve either your own columns, or the occasional op-ed. Some of the stuff to be found here compares extremely well with the mediocre offerings of journalists who’ve got their jobs almost solely due to who they know rather than what they know (like Amanda Platell, who reads more and more like Private Eye’s legendary creation, Glenda Slagg). She reminds me, indeed, of your comment at post 20 about journalists not allowing facts to get in the way of opinions. She keeps harping on about the government using terror alerts every time its in trouble, praying in aid the Heathrow Airport and Old Trafford stories. The problem with her theory is, the armoured cars at Heathrow were ordered by the police, and it was the police who also released the info. about match tickets being found at the addresses of terror suspects raided in Manchester.
I used to really enjoy Paul Routledge’s ‘The Insider’ column in the New Statesman, only for it to be replaced by Platell offering comment on the thighs of Wayne Rooney’s girlfriend, how Paula Radcliffe irritates her, and how Tony Blair is untrustworthy. On the other hand, there were less thinly disguised ‘Gizza job’ pleas than there were in her ‘Watching Brief’ column in the NS (which replaced Bill Hagerty’s media column).
Now Platell has finally found her natural home at the Daily Mail (where the paper’s surly malevolence and chippy negativity should suit her well, and where the bitchy comments about other women’s appearances are in the spirit of her predecessor, Linda Lee-Potter), I hope Routledge’s column will be restored at the NS.
Charlie Whelan’s ‘Don’t believe it’ column is also crap - it’s just ‘Brown is great, Blair is crap’ week after week. He writes it starting from that viewpoint, then adjusts (or twist) the facts to support that viewpoint.
Freudian slip there - what I meant was, there are people here who deserve their own paid columns in newspapers or journals.
Re 26 - If the Guardian want it I would love to be of assistance. I know we’ve got a number of nominations for their “Political blog of the year” and that should get us more attention from them. I agree with Richard - the quality of political analysis here from dozens of our contributors here is amazing and it would be good if the mainstream media started picking more up.
RE: Book Value (23), thanks, I am more pro-Humus than pro-Hamas and despise all terrorism, Iraqi, Israeli, Yemeni or Yanqui.
As for Richard’s Tong-in-Cheek remarks, I suppose I should be flattered by the comparison.
It will take more than a few words from Nick Cohen to win Withington (Haven’t we all lived in Didsbury at one time or another?) for the Lib Dems. Me Ole Mate Keef is a lot more left-wing than he ever lets on to the Clotheless Emperor at No 10 and will fight it out hard on the Ganga-filled streets for his votes. The take-away vote in Fallowfield and Levenshulme though is solid Lib Dem - just not in the right constituency.
No problem Tabman Steve. Allthough you did manage to provoke me into admitting I had once voted Liberal Democrat. I may never live it down!
I’m starting to worry about Zebidee, half the time i have no idea what he’s talking about.
Richard, regarding ‘Down Under Mandy’, I reckon she’s more at home really on that TV show “Moron and Platitudes” than the Mail, which is of course the natural home of that ex-darling of the left ‘MP’ Melanie Phillips whose particular Tel Aviv branch of Stalinism makes Moron’s Mandy seem like some latter-day Jenny Lee.
Don’t worry Max in 1992 both my mother and grandmother let me go into the voting booth with them and make the cross (thats must be breaking at least a dozen laws!:D ) and both times I voted conservative… [hangs head in shame]… oh well at least it wasn’t a marginal seat.
Re 36, there was a great “Just Fancy That” in the Eye a few months ago, juxtaposing Platell’s too-much-information comments about her own sex life in one of her columns, with her expressions of disgust about someone or other washing their dirty linen in public. (I don’t think it was Blunkett, probably earlier than that).
I was unsuccessfully googling to try to find the exact reference, and on the third page I came across the link to our previous exchange, Richard, on Alibhai-Brown, Phillips and Winterval. Good to see you back posting prolifically, and I hope you find time to continue it beyond the holiday season.
Re 36. Richard if you ever listen to Radio 5 on Sunday Mornings Charlie Whelan is the only commentator who is on for the duration of the programme (they used to also have the excellent Andrew Pierce from the Times). I remember him being asked if Gordon Brown should take any blame for the state of the pensions industry. Of couse Whelan said no. I don’t really understand why he is treated with less synecism than Alistair Campbell. The only reason I can think of is that Campbell generally looks/acts more aggressively but their both in the same business.
I think your right more generally, the quality of British political commentary in newspapers is appaling. I wish some of them would spend a bit more time outside of London. It would be a real eye-opener for them.
Re 42, you may be right, Zebidee (though I never watch it, when apart from Mandy, Moron is a personification of the cocky arrogance shown by many Gunners fans, not least his alleged throwing of banknotes at Blair, saying ‘Buy some toys for the kids’). As regards Melanie Philips, you should have read Craig Brown’s delicious ‘Frankly, it makes you want to weep’ parody a few months ago. She’s gone from being a humourless lefty to a humourless right-winger (the sourness and absence of humour is something she has in common with Platell - I have yet to see Platell smile on any programme, laugh on any programme, smile in any mugshot, or show any evidence of humour or wit in any column). At least Christopher Hitchens shows traces of humour, even if it is extremely sardonic, dry, and malicious.
I also knew the Moron and Platitude show wasn’t for me after seeing her performances not only on Question Time (where she whinges away, wearing a sour facial expression which resembles nothing so much as a smacked arse) but also her headless chicken performance on ‘Crisis Command - Could you run the country?’ As a spin-doctor, she gave advice which, in the fictional scenarios (such as a hijacked plane being crashed into the House of Commons) resulted in the deaths of thousands of people (ie not shooting the plane down after it was clear it had been hijacked). She spent the entire programmes snapping and whingeing at the contestants (or role-players).
Re 44, absolutely, book value. I remember well the column where Platell talked about her ex-husband’s problems getting it up (I wonder whether a male columnist would get away with talking about an ex-wife’s inability to orgasm?). Then again, just imagine the outcry there’d have been if Richard Littlejohn or Jim Davidson had described Chris Patten’s daughters as ‘overfed’ (as YAB did on Radio 4 after the handover of Hong Kong).
Thanks for the words of encouragement as well, book value. When YAB’s dreadful ‘odds and sods’ book is selling well, when Independent readers are bidding lots of money to have tea with her (!), and when my Mail-reading Grandad is waxing lyrical about Platell, I appreciate discussions with people who can see through these awful columnists all the more!
Having excoriated columnists I don’t like, I should give a positive mention to those I do, like Andrew Rawnsley and Matthew D’Ancona. Both those two generally tell it like it is. Riddell’s alright as well. Don’t think of much George Jones - he comes over as very pompous, priggish and humourless on TV and radio. Not at all like his brother, Nick (even his accent’s different). As for general opinion columnists, Deborah Orr is often very good.
Re. 45, yes I do occasionally, and I’ve heard him do his usual ‘chirpy Cockney’ act. On the subject of R5, Julian Worricker is very good - what a shame he got replaced on weekday mornings by Victoria Derbyshire (about whom every other journalist seems to rave) with her gratingly adenoidal, sloppy speech (put bluntly, she talks like a chav), and ingratiating faux mateyness. In fact, she reminds me of Anthea Turner. Fi Glover (who, of course, used to present the Sunday Service programme, on which Pierce usually got the better of Whelan) was excellent - R5’s loss is R4’s gain.
Richard - as a loyal (rather through lack of alternatives) Indy reader, they really suffer from a small budget. Half the decent opinion writers and clumnists have upped sticks to pastures new (or more lucrative). I used to enjoy Timothy Garton Ash’s stuff, also David Aaronovitch when at the Indy, but he seems to have gone downhill at the Grauniad. I digress … but this is why they end up with the likes of YAB alas.
To be honest the quality of offering here is far superior!
£1,450 for dinner with Y A-B? Dear me - they’d have to pay me a lot more than that!
I like Rawnsley too - have done since I watched “A Week In Politics” as a teenage political anorak - though he overplays the Blair-Brown feud stories, which are the Waiting For Godot of the political age. I like Aaronovitch, though don’t agree with him on the war. Usually I also quite like: Freedland, Hoggart, Carr, Hensher (not really political though). I read more of the Guardian than any other paper, more because of the quality of its website than from ideological attachment.
I more often than not disagree with Nick Cohen but have a lot of respect for his independence of mind; and I usually don’t agree with Boris Johnson but enjoy his writing. In a less affectionate way, I have to admit Mark Steyn can write very, very well at times.
Main dislikes: Alibhai-Brown, Toynbee, Hari, Phillips, Ashley, Fisk. Most of the Independent’s political analysts (as opposed to opinion-based columnists) I find fairly fatuous, but not enough to boil my blood.
What, book value, annoys you about Hari? I thoroughly dislike his unthinking Europhilia (to the extent that he seems to think its irreconcilable with being centre-left - in fact his column in May, which laughably described the Greens as being more Euroscepticla than UKIP, persuaded me to vote Green), his advocacy of 50% participation in higher education (the deluded soul thinks that the universities are going to be filled with Jude the Obscure types, eager to learn - as I know from personal experience, the people who will be dragged in will be workshy morons who, if they don’t need remedial lessons in English and Maths, will spoil things for those who do want to learn by chattering during the lectures, which they’re forced to attend by the school-like attendance registers introduced in response to the initial 100% non-attendance by the very same workshy morons, and who will be guaranteed to pass each year no matter how little work they do because the universities won’t want to lose funding), and his ‘prison doesn’t work’ liberalism on home affairs. His anguished liberal hand-wringing about calling people ‘chavs’ (which, apparently, is done by snobbish right-wing reactionaries such as Petronella Wyatt) was a laugh. In my experience, it’s respectable, well-behaved working-class people who hate chavs the most (when they’re sick of watching them gob on pavements everywhere, sick of them harrassing OAPs on Halloween, sick of them effing and blinding on public transport in full earshot of old ladies and kids, and also sick of them heckling bus drivers for supposedly driving too slowly - that’s when they’re not beating bus drivers up for telling them not to smoke on the bus).
I still can’t abide Mark Steyn (particularly not after his truly vile ‘the rain in Spain falls on the slain’ piece re. the Madrid bombings) but I’ve always liked PJ O’Rourke.
Re. the political analysts, Rentoul isn’t bad, but Richards is thoroughly tiresome on what’ll happen in any European referenda - every time he allows his own Europhilia to lead him to think that the result will be ‘Yes’ to the Constitution and Currency.
Viner and Blacker are good general columnists.
What keeps me reading the Indy most of all is James Lawton’s sports commentary, particularly his deliciously scatching dissections of Sven, Beckham’s England captaincy, and all the commentators who bleat about Arsenal being the best English team ever (better than the Liverpool which dominated the 70s and 80s, and which won four European cups, better than the Nottingham Forest managed by Brian Clough which won two European Cups, better than the Man Utd team which won the Triple in 99? I don’t think so).
Wow, profuse, nay prodigous, congratulations to Richard for the first 13 line sentence ever recorded on this site. The majestically contoured relative clauses are truly a wonder to behold. We must have more; the use of the English subjunctive would be the icing on the cake.
And who can disagree with his reflections on Master Hari? Trouble though with Steyn is that too often he is proved right….
50/51 - agree.
Hari is appalling - if I am ever inclined to agree with any of his rubbish it’s time for a reality check.
Lawton is the last of the great sportswriters.
the Indy is flawed but it is the only daily paper I could countenance paying hard currency for.
Ha ha - my tutor warned me against such 13 line sentences (’your writing is sometimes excessively convuluted’). On the whole, I’ve heeded his advice, though my ire at the likes of Master (’bumfluff’) Hari occasionally leads to a resurgence of such bad habits.
I had not heard that remark from Steyn before - I was going to use the phrase “evil genius” with self-knowing hyperbole in my previous post, but now…
I like O’Rourke: he is more nuanced than the caricature he can often paint of himself.
“Bomb North Korea” (I paraphrase only very slightly) was my personal Hari lowlight, but that and the examples you mentioned are all of a piece - the queasy pimple-scratching of someone with very little experience of the real world. (Ahem - I was two whole years above him at university…)
My own personal Hari lowlight was a few years ago in the New Statesman, with a piece titled ‘The boy who hadn’t heard of St Pauls’, about his difficulties with the culture at Cambridge as someone from a working-class background, thinking that other students were upper-class backgrounds when they read broadsheet newspapers and listened to Radio 4 (which I found amusing, as my own parents, whose background is working-class and who grew up on council estates, do both those things).
I don’t know if you’ve got any amusing stories of Master Hari’s time at Cambridge (it’d be difficult to better his own unintentionally amusing account just mentioned) but given the handwringing and pontificating to which he’s now prone, I have to pinch myself to realise he’s not from the same lah-di-dah Guardianista background as Polly Toynbee (though I do enjoy his mentions of what some Labour policies have done for his working-class relatives). He just hasn’t got the same gritty, down to earth (even playful) quality, which you find in those other columnists from working-class backgrounds, Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill.
He wrung hands and ificated ponts even at Cambridge. He was at one point a news editor of the student newspaper - a position which ought to imply some objectivity but in his opinion empowered him to get an interview with Tony Benn and turn it into more or less his own agonising about the destiny of the left. The words “And yet. And yet.” were definitely used.
Even though the paper’s editor was then moving it into a campaigning stoodent newspaper stance (as opposed to the more reserved and studied poise it had under the previous editor, when I was much more closely involved), Hari disappeared from the masthead not long after that.
I didn’t know him personally, only at a couple of removes. However, he certainly went to King’s College, which strains even more the credibility of the view that he was surrounded by the upper classes.
I agree with your last point - it’s kind of related to my incredulity that anyone would want to have dinner with Y A-B. Some columnists you can disagree with while thinking they’d probably be good company if you happened to meet them. You can’t really imagine a gossipy drink or meal with either of those two.
Richard, could not agree with you more on Toynbee. I have yet to meet anyone who likes the woman. Its a wonder she’s still employed. Maybe you should send the Guardian your CV, I’m sure its one paper that wouldn’t pick you up on 13 line sentences.
Toynbee is the widow, oddly enough, of the late Peter Jenkins. He seemed a genial cove (certainly the sort you could have a drink with), as well as a very good columnist. Their daughter (Amy Jenkins) was responsible for the TV series ‘This Life’.
As for 57, I might write thirteen line sentences, but I’ve never once used that awful phrase ‘And yet’ (or even ‘And yet. And yet.’) It’s almost as bad as ‘Time will only tell’ (ie ‘I haven’t a clue, I’m hedging my bets, but it’ll fill the space’)
Campaigning stoodent newspaper? Reminds me of what the Independent has become (for all its redeeming qualities).
Lancaster and the wyre is a uni seat that the studenst could make a difference. Students do make an effort to vote, and it likes to pride itself on being quite an ethical uni. Unfortunatley the lib dems and greens do well with the students and could pick up quite a few apathetic labour supporters, with a majority of only 500 it is gonna be very very close. the seat could depend on the labours students ability to convince people thet a lib dem and green vote gets a tory.
Tom
I think even where the Tories to make a tiny number of gains (a-la 2001) Lancaster and Wyre would almost certainly be amongst them. As it stands I think the Conservatives will gain 20-30 seats in May from Labour and the LDs, that said the North West is not a very promising area for them and L+W is about the only seat in that area which they are likely to win.
Just got back from a holiday Switzerland (the mountain air can do you a great deal of good and I didn’t find the internet cafe until the last day!) to see that things haven’t changed that much here (i.e. Ben appears to know with certainty what is going to happen when and where - is there any update on whether he is a many headed beast / Peter Mandelson ( or is that the same thing?)?
Anyway, whilst away, my dad showed me a piece in the Sunday Times by William Rees Mogg, and there is no doubt in my mind that he has been sneaking looks at this site - and, I am not ashamed to say, nicking my arguments about how the Lib Dems are going to do better than the current zeitgeist predicts.
On the back of that, I think we could expand on Tabman’s idea of getting quotes into Nick Cohen articles into a sort of ‘quote cricket’for all columnists in major publications - i.e. 1 run for a passing mention of the site, 2 runs for a plug, 3 for a ripped off argument (if accepted that it was run on this site first) 4 runs for a direct quote unattributed (but provable!) and 6 for an attributed direct quote (unlikely, as journalists are rarely ones for admitting that they haven’t come up with something on their own). We could then lay money on the final score after the election (which has the added advantage of election date speculation).
Being fair to Nick Cohen he has attributed things to this site on at least two or three occasions and it was the publicity he gave us in the summer when he was still at the Observer that helped to get Politicalbetting established.
What gets me are pieces like Michael Brown’s Indy feature yesterday when he wrote about the impact of the timing of the Kennedy baby on a May election. When the Telegraph mentioned this earlier in the week at least they gave credit to the site.
Re 59, exactly. I’ve nothing against the existing of campaigning left-wing papers, but it’s a shame we lost the old Independent to get this one. Another stock phrase of bad journalism (as pointed out by Mickey Kaus) is “comes at a time when…” - in other words, a connection between two events would be interesting; I can’t prove one but I’ll speculate anyway.
Re 63, perhaps there could be a drinking game. The Smithson family sit down in the evening to read the day’s papers, and drink 1 finger for a passing mention, 2 for a plug etc.
sorry, “existing” = “existence”.
Graham - I think your “Commentator Cricket” is an excellent idea. Looks like Nick Cohen’s in the lead!
Beware the curse of William Rees-Mogg though. If he predicts the Lib Dems will do well, then they certainly won’t.
I think I endorse virtually everything Richard says about political commentators. Humourless though Melanie Philips is , she does actually write very well about education.
Re. journalistic cliches, I still remember AJP Taylor’s cruel joke, ‘How do you silence a Guardian leader writer? Cut off his hands’.
Peter Oborne is quite often good in the Spectator. His apoplexy at the failure of Hague et al to serve in the Shadow Cabinet (his opinion of Hague’s Pitt biography is particularly sulphurous) is always worth reading, if only for sheer entertainment!
I’ve just bought Hague’s Pitt biography (half price in the Waterstones sale) and it’s not all that bad (certainly better than the otiose ‘potboiler’ Oborne makes it out to be!)
Going back to Hari, I’m amused by how his anguish over the imposition of neo-liberal economics in Iraq has infuriated the Dave and Davina Sparts of the Independent’s letters pages even more than his original support for the war.
Please visit the pages dedicated to texas holdem
…
Thanks! get out of debt
penis enlargement…
I start with penis enlargement !…
online bingo…
Also nuts online bingo free hold !…
7 card stud…
Join 7 card stud !…
free bingo…
Also free bingo games parlay ….
omaha hi lo…
As the vegas omaha hi lo mit ….
washing-machine…
…
comfort inn…
nitty.pedestrians mediate,bordellos hotels paris http://hotels-paris.hotel-4vacation.com/ …
rolex replica salvaged…
rolex daytona replica induced…