St Andrew and the Dragon

It was fascinating watching Andrew Marr don shining armour and go into battle, lance raised, on behalf of damsel-in-distress Labour MP Rosie Duffield this morning. 

It was even more fascinating watching Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer KCB QC looking distinctly uncomfortable throughout his interview today, like a boring, pratfall-prone, flaccid dragon.

Given that he's a barrister and former DPP, it's quite odd just how poor he is at defending himself.

I'd even call it a 'car crash interview'. 

It got so bad that I even wondered if Sir Keir must had had coaching lesson on interviewing techniques by Diane Abbott, the queen of car-crash interviews - though that's pretty unlikely, given that's she's betrothed to another. 

The analogy was made even stronger by Sir Keir's Massive overuse of 'Well, Andrew'. 

It was pure Jan Ravens on Radio 4's Dead Ringers impersonating Diane Abbott being interviewed by the late Andrew Neil. 

Well, Andrew...

Even Andrew Marr managed to pull Sir Keir apart on his contradiction of prior pledges over nationalisation and the contradiction between what he was saying on tax and what Rachel Reeves [his new, as-'boring, snoring'-as-he-is shadow chancellor] has said on tax, and even made him squirm a little over 'Scum'gate. 

The bit about Rosie, damsel of Duffield Towers, besieged in her Canterbury constituency by angry knights who believe they are maidens, was genuinely important - despite my flippancy - because it shows where we are now.

The Leader of the Opposition is a cowardly, self-censoring advocate for the Emperor's new clothes being real.  

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As The Andrew Marr Show recently gave up posting transcripts of all their major interviews, so here's mine. 

Look out for Sir Keir KCB claiming that trans people are ''the most marginalised and abused communities''. 

Are they? Will the BBC fact-check that?

And look out for him calling for a ''tolerant'' debate but then uttering the most extraordinary words, that what Rosie Duffield say - a pure fact about biology - is ''not right'' and ''shouldn't be said''.

Well, what she said is right and should be said. 

Does Sir Keir really believe what he's saying, or is he just scared of saying the unsayable truth for fear of offending trans extremists and their aggressive supporters and the weirdest and least tolerant parts of the present Labour Party?

For the leader of one of the two main UK parties to say that views like those of Rosie Duffield - the factual truth - ''shouldn't be said'' and that only ''proper views'' expressed ''in a proper way'' ought to be allowed in the national debate shows that we aren't in a good place as a country, politically-speaking. 

To put it mildly.

That said, he has form, He largely bit his tongue and shifted and slid about and manoeuvred to keep himself onside with the Corbynistas over antisemitism when serving Jeremy Corbyn. 

He should have resigned. 

And I don't agree with how Andrew Marr far too generously characterised Sir Keir today. 

If you talk to...if one talks to a wide range of your colleagues, a similar picture seems to come through. They almost all say, Sir Keir Starmer, honest as the day is long, punctilious, hard-working, thoroughly decent, but in the end he's not really a politician, he doesn't have the oomph and the edge to cut through in those big seats - but in the end he is not really a politician, and these are the days when you need someone who's a bit of a showman, who can really let rip and show who they are emotionally, and you're not that man.

Is he ''thoroughly decent'' and ''honest as the day is long''. Well, Andrew, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. 

Anyhow, here's the transcript.

 

Andrew Marr: Does someone who thinks only women have a cervix is [sic] welcome in the Labour Party?

Sir Keir Starmer: Now, look, Andrew. we need to have a mature, respectful debate about trans rights...

Andrew Marr: Yeah.

Sir Keir Starmer: ...and we need to, I think, bear in mind that the trans community are amongst, you know, the most marginalised and abused communities, and wherever we've gone to with the law, we need to go further - and we want to go further on that - but whatever the debate is it needs to be a tolerant debate, and I am absolutely sure that our conference will be a place which is safe for that debate to take place, and it is.

Andrew Marr: Is it transphobic to say that only women have a cervix?

Sir Keir Starmer: Well, it is something that shouldn't be said. It is not right. But, Andrew, I don't think that...

Andrew Marr: So Rosie Duffield should not have said that? Can you explain to people watching why she should not have said that?

Sir Keir Starmer: Well, Andrew, I don't think that we can just go through various things that people had said. Rosie Duffield...I spoke to Rosie earlier this week and told her that Conference was a safe place for her to come, and it is a safe place for her to come. And I spoke to others to make exactly the same principle. We do everybody a disservice when we reduce what is a really important issue to these exchanges on particular things that are said. But the trans community are, as I say, the most marginalised and abused of many, many communities and we need to make progress on the Gender Recognition Act.

Andrew Marr: You could say that 'exchanges' is how people communicate and resolve these things.

Sir Keir Starmer: Yeah but, Andrew, this debate...I am concerned that this debate needs to be conducted in a proper way in which proper views are expressed in a way that is respectful.

Andrew Marr: Sure. You've spoken to Rosie Duffield. We've spoken to Rosie Duffield. After your conversation, she still doesn't feel comfortable about coming to this Labour Party conference. What does that say about the Labour Party?

Sir Keir Starmer: Well, Andrew, I spoke to Rosie just earlier this week and made it absolutely clear to her that this is a safe Conference for her to come to.

Andrew Marr: She doesn't agree with that.

Sir Keir Starmer: Well, Andrew, I spoke to her, and what she said...

Andrew Marr: As did we.

Sir Keir Starmer: What she said to me was that she didn't want to come because it would cause a distraction from the ideas that we are putting forward at this Conference, and i asked her when I spoke to her whether that was something I could say on her behalf and she said yes. So that's what Rosie says about this, and I'll take that from Rosie.

Andrew Marr: OK. She said to us that she didn't feel comfortable.

Wonder what that Rosie/Sir Keir phone call actually said? I'm not sure I quite believe Sir Keir's gloss on it.

Whatever next

Following my post about how I feel when people I like say stupid things, here’s a post about my own hypocrisy. How does it make you feel when you catch yourself accidentally using tactics you loathe in others? Yes, it’s me, channelling my inner Victoria Derbyshire.

The Gotcha. We criticise BBC stalwarts like Andrew Marr for relentlessly pursuing the ‘gotcha’ for its own sake. What is the adversarial interview for? To draw out the flaws and weaknesses in a given argument, or simply to humiliate the interviewee? If the sole aim is to make the victim shrivel up and expire, like pouring salt on a slug, it indicates that somewhere along the line someone has lost the plot.

It doesn’t happen very often, but when the victim does crumble and fall, the ‘perpetrator’ appears to be taken aback. After the infamous evisceration of George Entwistle John Humphrys kind of protested “I didn’t really mean it”. The pyrrhic victory of killing off your prey altogether. Poor Humph didn’t know his own strength.

Look at those YouTube clips captioned “so-and-so “destroys” so-and-so. In fact, so-and-so very rarely does any such thing. In any case, the way you see it always depends on whose side you’re on.

‘We’ critics of the BBC go for gotchas, too, but one difference is that we’re relatively impotent. If we bag a corker, no-one influential gives a stuff. Personally, I prefer to highlight the ‘general’ pattern of bias, rather than going down the ‘gotcha’ route but I’m not averse to drawing on the particular to illustrate my point. If I ever manage to capture a definitive ‘gotcha’ of my own, I’ll be hypocritical enough to exploit it.   

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Avoiding the term ‘terror.’ Here’s something that doesn’t properly qualify as a gotcha. Yesterday  Frank Gardner (Help me I’m a Muslim) was wheeled in to Beebsplain the fatal incident at a police headquarters in Paris. He said the motive wasn’t clear. The perpetrator was an ex-employee, so it may have been personal. He did mention that the counter-terrorism department was involved in the investigation, but he didn’t know if this will be regarded as terrorism. Well, we all know by now that the perpetrator is a recent ‘convert’ to the ROP, but we don’t yet know whether the conversion was related to the deadly rampage.

In any event, the BBC doesn’t use the term terrorism, said Frank “because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. Oh! So that’s the reason the BBC doesn’t use the term! Who knew? However, they sometimes do use it. But not when it’s anything to do with … oh well. 

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“Indarjit Singh, as he has been known to listeners, has accused the corporation of “prejudice and intolerance” after it tried to prevent him from broadcasting an item commemorating an executed Sikh guru who had opposed the forced conversion of Hindus to Islam under the Mughal emperors of India in the 17th century.
He said that the BBC had tried to stop the script being broadcast last November “because it might offend Muslims” 

Good Grief, whatever next.

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US congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s overtly antisemitic remarks, which almost everybody whole-heartedly condemns. Might I say anything almost similar, but in reverse, which could be interpreted in a similar way?

Her most well-known offensive comment is of course  “Israel has hypnotised the world,” There are umpteen articles about this. It was initially a Tweet.  Like Naz Shah, Omar hadn’t realised this was redolent of an antisemitic trope, and she apologised and deleted the Tweet. It’s hard to believe that someone smart enough to get herself elected to congress, as she has, could be so ignorant or innocent, but she did apologise - before almost straight away reverting to type. 

The latter part of the Tweeted sentence is the key: “…may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” 

It’s fair to say that Omar’s background explains her antisemitism, even if it doesn’t justify it - after all she is an American now and she demands to be treated as one - but invoking “Allah” exposes her inability to see ‘reason’. Reason is inaccessible to a religious Muslim. The point I would make is that it’s not “Israel’ that has hypnotised the world. Here, I am about to stray a little (towards shades of hypocrisy) and ask - Who’s hypnotised? Not the world, by a long chalk. Not the Muslim world. Not the U.N. Not the hard left nor the hard right. 

If there’s any ‘hypnotism’ involved, it’s in the historically illiterate population’s trance-like espousal of the hocus-pocus fictitious “narrative’ that the Palestinians and their useful idiots have imposed upon the world. You might say I’m echoing Ilhan Omar in reverse. My narrative is better than your narrative. But I know which side I’m on. The side of reason.

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Rosie Duffield MP made an emotional speech in the HoC  which drew a round of applause from the honourable members sitting nearby. And hugs. 

On the one hand, the HoC seems to have its own inner Victoria Derbyshire about it these days. However, this was about a domestic violence bill, and my off the cuff reaction is that it might be one of those ‘Act in haste, repent at leisure’  laws with unintended consequences. (Not that I know what’s in the bill) Coercive control is already a criminal offence by the way.

We’re so polarised these days. I realise Isabel Hardman has recovered from a serious bout of clinical depression so it’s understandable that her piece in the Spectator (with video) was unequivocally sympathetic to the MP's suffering. However, the comments below the line were not unanimous. Some wanted to hear “his side of the story.” As a casual observer, it immediately struck me that the behaviour of the abusive partner indicated that he had acute pathological insecurities of his own, which also need ‘help’. 

  

Her colleagues’ sympathetic response to Ms Duffield’s story was completely understandable, but for what it's worth, I think, when the dust settles, a reflective approach to this complex two-handed kind of scenario would be productive. Punishing the perpetrator for own psychological problems seems futile.

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If you find your own ambivalence to almost every topic an increasing worry, you’ll understand. 

I’m even beginning to find Lisa Nandy’s ‘tribal’ comment slightly defensible - in a good light and with a following wind.

After all, if you’ve been seduced by the pro-Palestinian machinery (hypnotised)  then you too might aspire to become chair of some ghastly anti-Zionist cabal. I just thought Lisa Nandy was smarter than that, but - may the Israel lobby awaken Lisa Nandy and help her see the evil doings of Hamas.