"It's a British establishment problem, and the BBC's worst at it"

And here's a little more from the 'hardcore' David Davis's interview with Andrew Marr this morning:

David Davis: Look, you had on this programme last week the past master of political tactics. He had Tony Blair on here. He didn't make much concealment, as it were, of his wish to see this whole thing reversed, right? What was his first step towards that? A deferral. And then a second referendum. And then, he hopes, a reversal. Well, that's what this is about and the British people understand very clearly what is going on, they understand better than the commentators...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) So you are hoping really for no deal at this point? 

David Davis: No, no, I'm not. The reason I've always said that no deal has got to stay on the table is because it's what brings the European Union back. Now...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) Sorry, so the choice for you might be this deal or no Brexit at all?

David Davis: No, no, I think... That is what we are going to be aiming to avoid in the tactics...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) But if that is the choice, what's the answer? 

David Davis: Frankly, this deal is worse than current membership in one sense because we can't get out of it, but I don't think that is anything like the best outcome. And what we have to do...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) So you would rather stay in? 

David Davis: No. No, no, no. I...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) Well, these are the choices now ahead of you. 

David Davis: No, it's not, this is one of the problems, you keep... It's a British establishment problem, and the BBC's worst at it. You keep posing this as though these are choices that we make. No, they're not. They are stepping stone in a negotiation. And so what would happen...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) But Parliament is going to have to make these choices.

David Davis: Yes, it will have to make the initial choices and then the Government will go back to negotiate. If it says no deal is still on the table, I don't think no deal will happen. I think the European Union will come back and say 'Let's take another couple of weeks to negotiate'. Why? Because whether it's the German Halle Institute or the IFO or any on them, they all say the damage to the European Community is much, much greater than the damage to Britain, much, much greater by order of magnitude difference...

Andrew Marr: (interrupting) We will wait and see with great interest. 

David Davis: They won't do it. They won't do it. 

Andrew Marr: Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. 

Hardcore

Watching The Andrew Marr Show, I was struck by how Andrew introduced David Davis as a "hardcore Brexiteer", and it quickly turned out that I wasn't the only one:

Andrew Marr: So, as we wait for official confirmation of whatever the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has or hasn't brought back from Brussels, the Prime Minister's chances of getting her deal through still hang on the attitudes of Tory hardcore Brexiteers. One of them is David Davis,  former Brexit secretary, who joins us now. David Davis, first of all, what would she need to bring back to bring you over? 

David Davis: I'm not sure I would agree with the characterising of "hardcore Brexiteers", but by the by...

It's good to see pro-Brexit people pushing back against the BBC over this kind of thing. 

Mad David?

David Davis is a seasoned politician and I'm sure he's much, much wiser than me when it comes to the art of politics so I probably shouldn't lecture him but I can't help feeling that he's made a big mistake by even raising the possibility that post-Brexit Britain could be a “Mad Max-style world borrowed from dystopian fiction”. The enemies of Brexit were surely bound to pounce on such language and make hay with it. 

And pounce they most certainly have, and the fun has already begun.

Chris Bryant MP: Somehow the line that Brexit won't plunge us into a Mad Max dystopia isn't very reassuring.  #Imagineiftheyhadjustputthatonthebus. 

Jay Rayner: I don't know about you, but that's me reassured. (Still, I'm stockpiling petrol, chainsaws, and a fine collection of leather chaps; better safe than sorry, eh). 

Lord Falconer: Boris’ speech suggests building bridge across Channel, Davis’ speech says post Brexit UK won’t be as bad as Mad Max. 27 are currently fixing  negotiating guidelines. What must they think of our govt? 

Alex von Tunzelmann: I for one am certainly not now panicking and working out how to distil drinking water from my own bodily fluids. 

The Guardian immediately made David Davis: Brexit will not plunge Britain into 'Mad Max dystopia' their main headline last night, and they were closely followed by the BBC doing the same thing, with the headline Post-Brexit UK won't be 'Mad Max-style world' and a photo of a worried-looking David Davis alongside it:

This morning's BBC Breakfast put it like this:

Britain will not be "plunged into a Mad Max-style world borrowed from dystopian fiction" after it leaves the EU. That's what the Brexit Secretary David Davis is expected to say in a speech he'll make in Austria later today. 

And one of the presenters said:

And it does seem an extraordinary use of language, to be talking about Mad Max, even if he is saying that is not what will happen.

Well, yes.

And Emily Maitlis, on last night's Newsnight, outlined the story and then laughed, asking "So that's good news?"

P.S. Former Newsnight economics correspondent Duncan Weldon puts it like this:

Coda

Corbyn. In a permanent state of reflection (but not looking in the mirror)

Daily Politics. H/T  Happy Goldfish 

Who is Lord Dubs?  Alf Dubs was helped to flee Czechoslovakia at the age of 6 by the late Nicholas Winton when the Nazis arrived in the late 1930s. His father was Jewish.

Here he is speaking about antisemitism in the Labour Party on the Daily Politics on 21st March. 

Jo Coburn:

“Over the weekend, one of your colleagues, Lord Levy, threatened to resign unless Jeremy Corbyn, your leader, makes absolutely clear that anti-semitism will not be tolerated in the Labour Party, saying he's not gone far enough in cracking down on it. Do you think Jeremy Corbyn could be doing more about that issue?" 

Chuka Umunna:

"It would be completely disingenuous for anybody to deny that in fringes on the left there have been problems with anti-semitism. but I tell you what, if anyone can lead the charge. in stamping it out and showing a zero tolerance to it, it is Jeremy." 

Lord Dubs: 

"I think we've got to be careful that when people are critical of Israeli government policy, they're not accused of being anti-semitic. There are some people who tend to merge the two. Clearly they are totally different!"

 It’s understandable that former refugees would identify with immigrants and tend to be in favour of immigration. However, someone should point out that there is a big difference between Jews fleeing Nazism, where their very existence was  a crime, and Muslim immigrants fleeing intra-Muslim war zones and, in their host countries remaining in closed communities that are fundamentally hostile to the west.

Look at the smug expression on David Davis’s face as he nods in agreement with Lord Dubs’s assertion that critics of Israeli government policy mustn’t be accused of being antisemitic. 

This superficial deflection really shouldn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged. Criticism of Israeli government policies all too often is very clearly antisemitic, as it invariably ignores the provocation and aggression that necessitates much of the Israeli government policies designed to protect Israelis against violence. These policies are usually the ones that antisemites criticise the most, and they get away with doing so simply because the violence, racism and incitement that exists within Palestinian society is rarely reported in the western media.

Another H/T to the Happy Goldfish. 

Radio 4 The World Tonight with Shaun Ley . “Jewish organisation criticises Corbyn“

I don’t much like the tone of Shaun Ley’s interview with Jonathan Arkush and later with Ken Livingstone, but that’s subjective.

Ley:

“(Jeremy Corbyn’s) brother might have views that you don’t like, but he’s not, as it were, his brother’s keeper, is he? The judgment is not what the Labour leader says but what he does.” 

 Should Shaun Ley describe Piers Corbyn’s poorly disguised antisemitism as ‘views you don’t like’? 

Re. using the word Zionism as a pejorative:

Arkush: 

“All it means is the right of self-determination for Jewish people” 

Ley:

“And the distinction between the right of self-determination and what the Israeli State itself does - what its current government does and what its policies are - is it possible in your view to oppose what the current government of Israel does and not be antisemitic?

Back to deflecting. “What the current government of Israel does” is a commonly deployed mechanism for insinuating that Israel is gratuitously ill-treating poor defenceless innocent Palestinians; it’s the context-free  insinuation that lets antisemites off the hook. (The context being that the Palestinian leadership’s fundamental position is the immutable, unshakeable,  permanent, entrenched opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, both in action and in words forever and ever amen.)

Arkush:

No problem because Israel is a vigorous democracy and its critics are just like critics of our own government. [...]I’m concerned about hostility to people because they are Jewish.[...]  

Ley:

Have you confronted Jeremy Corbyn with this? Only it’s one thing to come into a radio studio and make these criticisms and allegations but I wonder if you’ve tried to raise it directly with him.

 It’s almost as if Arkush has just barged his way into the studio uninvited, like a political gatecrasher on a mission to defame the Labour Party.

Arkush:

I put some things to him (about his meetings with terrorists and holocaust deniers) will you now say that on reflection that they weren’t a good idea and you won’t repeat them, and I pressed him, and all he would say is that he would reflect on them. Two months have passed.

Ken Livingstone (0:15:10) on the phone-line. 

 “I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for 47 years, I’ve never heard someone say anything anti-semitic.”

Jonathan Arkush 0:16:00

 “Well, just in the last few weeks we’ve had a stream of Labour figures who have said things which are anti-semitic on social media, and I’m not sure why Ken Livingstone hasn’t heard them.”

Craig will be back soon, blogging about all manner of things. Sighs of relief all round.