In the Thick of it

Watching Ed Miliband on the Marr show this morning brought to mind a show that was supposed to be satire but turns out to be ‘not’.  In ‘The Thick of It’ media strategies are hastily cobbled together to divert the public’s attention from The Party’s crazy mixed-up, contradictory policies, gaffes and incompetences.

This morning we got a peep into the way it works in all its Thick of It glory. Ed was tasked with reconciling bendy-knee Starmer’s contradictory messages in an attempt to restore the Party’s credibility. 

Neatly rationalising (leftsplaining away) the inconsistency in sacking someone for “telling the truth” (as the left still insist is what has happened) and not wishing (AsaJew) to be seen to be giving Israel a free pass, he finessed with a  convincing justification for sacking R L-B with a deft: “Why single out Israel and not the UK when the UK also trains US police?” (nice one) 

Then, bravely attempting to keep the antisemites onside, he came out with an impassioned: ”I’m one of the biggest critics of the Israeli government.”

However, this embarrassingly transparent example of toeing the ‘the party line’ was poorly thought through. Making unrealistic demands on the public - a big ask - that it must apply nuance and thoughtfulness to the sacking of R L-B on the one hand while jumping on the laziest most un-subtle bandwagon of an excuse for slamming Israel with a nuance-free, trigger-happy sledgehammer, on the other hand, was desperate ‘In the Thick of It” style, almost satirical, inconsistency gawn mad. 

Of course, Andrew Marr nodded along sympathetically throughout.

P.S. Guido has it, so I felt obliged to upload it.

Emergency! Debate

Remember those ‘survival’ dramas that were popular on TV? You know, at the start the protagonists don’t realise that a deadly virus is sweeping the globe. Only the audience knows. As people die off, struggles ensue between desperate mobs. Emergency! Will humanity be saved?

This is happening in real-time. The BBC has gone rogue and joined the mob. It’s not the only news organ to do so, of course, but this is the one that claims to be the trustworthy one. The one that checks stuff out.

As readers of this and like-minded blogs and websites already know, anti-Trump mania is now a pandemic. 

As if it’s not enough that the Executive Order immigration fiasco has been deliberately misinterpreted by those that should know better and is now known as Trump’s Ban on Muslims, our MPs have surpassed even the media in their slipshod abuse of language.  

If you’ve seen Parliament TV you’ll know what I mean. 

Using Holocaust Memorial Day to perpetuate sly comparisons between Muslim refugees and Kindertransport  as Yvette Cooper and others habitually do is offensive enough, the underhand way they always get away with this insulting and totally inaccurate conflation is a reflection of the media’s appalling lack of scrutiny. Worse still is the total absence of any acknowledgement of the reason behind President Trump’s clumsy move. 

The media and the speakers in yesterday’s debate have completely airbrushed Islamic terrorism out of the equation. It has been forgotten. Not only that, but in an astonishingly cloth-eared fashion they have ignored the fact that Muslims (predominantly) have, let’s euphemistically call it ‘negative views of Jews’.

Everyone is using the Holocaust to preach the wrong lesson.

“Look what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis” they say. “We must learn from the Holocaust. Muslims are the new Jews and we must take them in, or we are no better than the Nazis.” 

No. If you must generalise like that you also need to admit that the Muslims have more in common with the Nazis than we do. By all means take some of them in. But vet them, Bigly.

Ed Miliband made an impassioned speech. “Does President Trump think this will make the world a safer place?” he asked, rhetorically. “No it will not” nodded the MPs in agreement. “In fact the opposite!” they sighed. 

Maybe so; because it will anger the Muslims and they will attack us. Better not provoke such a thing. Make no mistake. Ed Miliband is arguing for appeasement.

I was a Jew

To Naz Shah, (Bradford West, Lab)Trump’s Ban on Muslims is something to do with their skin being “a few shades darker.”

AsaMuslim, Naz has put all that nasty antisemitism behind her. Her rehabilitation appears to have given her delusions of grandeur, as her performance went on and on. At the end it lapsed into pure comedy, when she recited  the famous Niemöller quotation: 

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Jew.

Only, in a hilariously Freudian slip, she missed out the last “Not”. 

 “I did not speak out because I was a Jew” she intoned. That was almost as funny as one of Sarah Millican’s monologues about her nonnie.

Hansard has corrected it, but it’s still there in the video  (Scroll down /r.h. sidebar  and click on 18:55:09) 

Check it out.

Update.

This article is a must-read. Here are the last two paragraphs:

It might be compassion that leads the West to take in millions of Muslim refugees, but it is reckless compassion. Why isn't Saudi Arabia taking refugees temporarily until things settle down in Syria and Iraq? Do Westerners question the motivation of Islamic theocracies, as to why ultra-rich Arab nations are sending us their refugees but taking in none?
Who is really benefiting from the policy of appeasement, the acceptance of Sharia-stricken theocracies and their jihadist, hate-filled education? Some "tough love" is urgently needed if Muslims are to be motivated to change and reform.

In case you don't know about the author Nonie Darwish, she’s one of a handful of courageous former Muslim female activists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan.

Medhi and the Ed Stone

As it's Friday night, we're going to hand over the blog to Ed Miliband (remember him?) for a while...

Thanks Craig, that's a great question. Good to be with you here at ITBB. (And, no, it isn't biased). And, look, thank you for all of your support following my party's humiliating defeat this past May.

Look, I want to come to the detail of that in a minute, but I want to make a broader point which is a very, very important point for the future of the country. I believe passionately that politicians should sound human...

Sorry to interrupt there, Ed, but here's something you might want to read - and that's far too irresistible not to post..

Here's Mehdi Hasan in 2010, just before you became leader, showing the political perspicacity for which the kuffar-bashing freelancer is so well known:

I remember the first time I realised Ed Miliband could be the next Labour leader. Standing in a packed room at the TUC's Congress House headquarters in January, at Ken Livingstone's Progressive London conference, I watched as the younger Miliband brother, clad in a fleece and jeans, inspired a captive audience of party members, Trots, anarchists, Greens and, yes, Liberal Democrats. Speaking without notes, the then climate change secretary passionately made the case for tackling global warming, despite the depressing deadlock at Copenhagen a month earlier. "He's awesome, isn't he?" whispered the young woman next to me, her eyes alight with excitement.

Of all the Oxbridge candidates running for Labour leader, it is Ed Miliband who displays the common touch - or, in the words of Neil Kinnock, the "X-factor". "He has a special ability to lift spirits and motivate people - the capacity to inspire," says the former Labour leader. The younger Miliband's strategists and supporters have known from the start that this is their man's strongest selling point: his ability to reach out, in our new, plural era of coalition politics. Throughout this protracted contest, throngs of energised Ed Miliband supporters have descended on the various hustings holding placards proclaiming "Ed Speaks Human".

Let us be clear: Ed M is not JFK. Nor is he the British equivalent of Barack Obama. But he does have the all-important ability to connect with ordinary people, especially the young, and to motivate and inspire them.

So, Ed, what do you make of that?

Thanks Sue, that's a great question.

Look, while I was walking on Clapham Common one night, I met a man called Gareth. He said to me, "Look, I want a politician who speaks human". I said, "Look, I am that politician". Gareth voted UKIP. We need to listen to Gareth...

Sorry, Mr Miliband, I'm going to have to interrupt you there. We've run out of time, I'm afraid. Back to Laura in the studio...

Thanks Craig. Now the Labour leadership contest may not be thrilling the nation but Twitter and the Newsnight audience are clearly swinging Jeremy's way. (Corbyn's, not Paxman's of course). Here's our political editor, Allegra Stratton...

Laura, I've learned tonight that Andy Burnham has received the backing of the Unite and Thunderbirds unions. According to Twitter, Liz Kendall is a Tory and the only hope for the nation is to vote for me...er, for Yvette Cooper. 

Thanks Allegra. Now here's the former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, and restaurateur and friend of Yvette Cooper, René Artois  Thank you for coming onto Newsnight. Now, M. Artois, who do you think would make the best leader for Labour?

Merci, Laura, you stupid woman. Ah, Yvette!...

And to you, Ed Balls?

Ah, Michelle of the Resistance!...er...Ah, Yvette!

Branded.

American researchers have found human brains imitate the speech patterns of other people, even complete strangers, without meaning to.

They say a humans want to “bond” with others, even when a voice cannot be heard or, somewhat embarrassingly, even if another person is a foreigner.

Scientists from the University of California, Riverside, found the subconscious copying of an accent comes from an inbuilt urge of the brain to “empathise and affiliate”.

Well, we all knew that didn’t we? Look at George Galloway with that hilarious 

Scots/Paki-ese that comes forth whenever he’s addressing his core voters.

Well. I don’t think many of us will be able to stomach the whole of Ed’s cringe-making chat with Russell Brand, but according to the clip that’s been bandied about all over the BBC this morning, Ed’s been doin’ a lo’, lo’ of empafising.   You go’’a do it, aincha?  Let’s be clear.

How old do we have to be to tolerate the BBC’s output? About thirteen and three quarters?  Last night’s election-themed Newsbeat showed that young people have confused the government with Mum and Dad - bank of. Turn the bankers into food-bankers!  Interest? Not interested.

Russell Brand has a YouTube channel for some reason, I imagine for his activism and some sour, un-fun comedy. 

The clips of the MiliBrand interview remind me of Ali G and Tony Benn, but without Sacha Baron Cohen. No irony, just pure humourless Ali G, and Ed as the sucker.

Or, for pantomime dameness, Edna Everage, but without the backstage support of a Barry Humphries,  Ed still as the sucker.

Someone said Ed believes if it gains him a few votes, it will be worth it. If not it will provide endless mockery for evermore, like Neil Kinnock slowly falling into the sea backwards. 

Aggravated crimes

Further to Craig’s excellent review of this morning’s Andrew Marr, I thought Boris’s performance was a bit of an anticlimax. His most notable quality is his refusal to be intimidated by the Marrs and Paxos of the media world when they turn on that haughty superiority (in Paxo’s case) and a kind of hectoring irritability in Marrs’s, both of which seem to get the better of other politicians.

Boris shares that quality with Nigel Farage, come to think of it. Neither of them are in awe of the self-regarding BBC titans, and they both still manage to retain their personal charm whilst determinedly ‘not having any of it’. 

However Boris was more bumbling than decisive today; the stand-out moment was when he said to Andy something like:  “As a lefty BBC journalist you would say that.”

People should say that more often. As for Ed, well, if he keeps saying ‘let’s be clear’ we can only assume it’s an admission of being unclear hitherto. 

I wish all politicians would stop saying “It’s the right thing to do”. They might get away with “I believe it’s the right thing to do” -  but who needs to be told what the right thing to do is by a politician. Let us decide that for ourselves please.

I do find the constant probing about possible alliances and allegiances tedious. We know premature confirmation of future allegiances would have undesirable ramifications for the voting.  The politician can’t answer in any meaningful way, so why must the interviewer keep trying to wheedle it out? Ed’s outright denial of Labour tying a post-election knot with the SNP was so obviously a tactic that it was pointless.

There is one question I’d have liked put to Mr. Let’s-be-clear.

In the Labour manifesto:  

We’ll take robust action against hate crimeAs a country, we must stand together to eradicate hatred, prejudice and intolerance, rather than letting it spread. A Labour government will develop a cross-government strategy on hate crime, from schools to social media, to tackle the growth in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We’ll ensure hate crimes are properly recorded, including incidents of Islamophobia, as is currently done with other types of crime.

In ‘Muslim News’ it says:

A future Labour Government is committed to outlaw the scourge of Islamophobia by changing the law and making it an aggravated crime, according to the Party’s Leader Ed Miliband.
“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” Miliband told the Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi in a wide ranging exclusive interview.“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country,” he said.Labour Party Manifesto pledged to take a “zero-tolerance approach to hate crime” regarding the growth of Islamophobia as well as anti-Semitism. “We will challenge prejudice before it grows, whether in schools, universities or on social media. And we will strengthen the law on disability, homophobic, and transphobic hate crime,” it said.

So what is it to be? Is a Labour government going to make ‘Islamophobia’ a hate crime? 

ASBO for Craig, prison for me? 

The left, Israel and being Jewish

Nick Cohen has written a piece in the Spectator which I find odd. It concerns the Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström, who has denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia, condemned the Saudi courts for the harsh punishment of blogger Raif Badawi, and, really, criticised a whole raft of medieval practices that Islamic countries are ideologically wedded to. What took her so long?

Sweden used to be the model of laid back liberalism. It was a country full of golden-haired goddesses who liked to live and let live in the most modern and free thinking fashion. Now, its tolerance and free-thinking has attracted a mass influx of radical Islamists and the country is famous because it has become the rape capital of the west.  Sweden has embraced pro-Palestinian advocacy of course.

She’s in trouble for speaking out. Nick Cohen is full of admiration for the plucky Swede.  

“It is a sign of how upside-down modern politics has become that one assumes that a politician who defends freedom of speech and women’s rights in the Arab world must be some kind of muscular liberal, or neocon, or perhaps a supporter of one of Scandinavia’s new populist right-wing parties whose commitment to human rights is merely a cover for anti-Muslim hatred. But Margot Wallström is that modern rarity: a left-wing politician who goes where her principles take her.”

This is all well and good. We admire her for suddenly seeing and articulating the obvious, and we’re full of contempt for those who refuse to see what’s in front of them. Like Nick Cohen, everyone should be horrified that “the Swedish establishment has gone wild.”

We are, we are. However, this next bit is extremely problematic. You’ll see why.

She is foreign minister in Sweden’s weak coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, and took office promising a feminist foreign policy. She recognised Palestine in October last year — and, no, the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Co-operation and Gulf Co-operation Council did not condemn her ‘unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Israel’. I confess that her gesture struck me as counterproductive at the time. But after Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out a Palestinian state as he used every dirty trick he could think of to secure his re-election, she can claim with justice that history has vindicated her.

I don’t expect every opponent of radical Islam to understand Israeli politics, and I don’t assume Nick Cohen has to be an admirer of Benjamin Netanyahu in order for his opinion on the Islamization of Sweden to count. But I do expect him to have a little more understanding of Netanyahu’s tactics and the desperate predicament his country faces than to declare that Wallström’s ill-advised, premature recognition of ‘Palestine’ has been vindicated by history.  

It’s almost as if Cohen has used her recognition of ‘Palestine’  to excuse her, or to give her more credibility - with the readership of his article, as well as with the Swedish government and the EU. 

I looked at the comments to find out if any of the responses picked up this point. One or two did.

This has a tenuous but valid relationship to the way the BBC presents the Israeli / Palestinian situation.  

That was a ‘leftist’ issue, and so is this.   H/T Harry’s Place  This piece in Tablet (the Jewish, not the Catholic) examines Ed Miliband and his position regarding Jewishness and his attitude to Israel. It opens:

“In a packed conference hall in Islington, north London, the disembodied voice of Omar Barghouti is calling in over Skype. The co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement exhorts the crowd to renew their efforts for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), which is holding the meeting. He derides and denigrates Israel, the apartheid state. And then, his rhetoric building up to a pitch, he delivers his killer line: “Balfour is dead, now let’s bury his damned colonial legacy.” A loud cheer echoes around the room.”

It’s a good read. Ed wants to be PM, so some of his ambivalence is understandable, given the state we’re in. (Largely Labour’s doing) There is one jarring note in this piece. It’s in this bit here:

“ Geoffrey Alderman points to three major factors that have driven British Jews to the right. First, the community has been upwardly mobile and become more and more established as an upper-middle-class group in British society, making it naturally more conservative. Secondly, philo-Semitic Tory leader Margaret Thatcher also came to power in the north London constituency of Finchley, appointing several Jews to her cabinet and ushering in an era of market-driven economics that has been kind to the Jewish community. Many Jews living in north London and voting in the upcoming election will be just as exercised by Labour’s planned “mansion tax” on expensive houses as they are about Israel.”

The writer needs to bear in mind that though there may be some truth in the last sentence, without qualification it’s sailing dangerously close to the infamous Tim Willcox ‘mansion tax/wealthy Jews’ remark, which was taken to be an antisemitic slur. Whenever people refer disparagingly to ‘those wealthy Jews’, and I’m sure there are quite a few successful Jewish business persons, they should remember who’s  buying up half of london these days. If we’re talking about money, power, control, lobbying, and wealth beyond the wildest dreams of Mr and Mrs normal, the Arabs beat the Jews hands down.

Apart from that, there is one heroic Labour MP. Michael Dugher, MP for Barnsley East. (Speech at 'We believe in Israel" conference 2015.) Is he the UK’s Margot Wallström?

  

Rumble in jungle

Bias? 

I suppose we ought to mention the rumble in the jungle. I disagree with whoever it was that declared Paxo the winner.

 I thought he was hopeless. The aggressive approach that’s suppose to ruffle feathers and stimulate passion only creates defensiveness and a kind of special politician’s brand of inhibition. Instead of drawing out potential, it kills it off.  Hell yes.

So after all that evasiveness and defensiveness, we’re none the wiser. Kay Burley got a thorough pasting on the interweb. Yes, she does resemble a cat.

The only thing worth just mentioning - in my humble, not very impressed opinion - was a superfluous debriefing in the BBC’s ‘spin room’.

They interviewed  a small cluster of Labour supporters and Nigel Farage. “What did you think of it so far?” they asked people like Dan Hodges and Kevin Maguire. “Rubbish” came the reply.   “Who came across best?“ Ed’s passion, apparently.

They must have been watching a different programme from the one I watched. 

After the Labour-luvvies plus the Ukip leader had given their verdicts, along came William Hague, and suddenly something went wrong with the sound.