Cocked Hat

You’ll probably have already watched this fascinating video from Unherd (featured on Guido Fawkes.) It's Freddie Sayers’s interview of Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke

Fawkes’s bullet-pointed extrapolations from the film hold good, but I would take away a few extra ones as well. 

The Swedish strategy turns out to be much less dissimilar to the UK’s than meets the eye, and Freddie Sayers’s questioning is pertinent and of a kind that the BBC repeatedly fails to put “on our behalf.”  His questions are ones that viewers themselves would actually wish to put, should they have the opportunity to do so.

For example, I spy a political underbelly here. For me, the clue lies in the professor’s fear that a strict Lockdown strategy is an inevitable route to totalitarianism and dictatorship. A very Swedish attitude.

Sayers asks if Prof. Giesecke is taking “A slightly cold-hearted approach” (and that was something that immediately struck me.)

Again, one of the most significant remarks that stood out for me (It would, wouldn’t it?) was:

“Let’s discuss this a year from now”.

If you’ve been following previous threads on this blog you’ll know what I mean.

The proliferation of this kind of direct reporting, (think also of Steven Egerton of The Sun) consistently knocks the BBC's efforts into a cocked hat.

Many of the people we've spoken to say...

Here's how Jenny Hill concluded her remarks about the Swedish election outcome on last night's BBC News at Ten: 

In the meantime, Swedes are digesting the news that the far-right have made such significant gains here. Many of the people we've spoken to say they are horrified by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Sweden Democrats and that they are embarrassed that this country, like so many other EU states in the wake of the migrant crisis, appears to be shifting to the political right.

Wonder if Jenny is ever embarrassed at her own reporting?

Quite lazily

The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming was on today's Politics Live and made an interesting comment about the Sweden Democrats - and, indirectly, criticised his own BBC News colleagues:

I think there'll be a sigh of relief this morning that the Sweden Democrats, who are often labelled, quite lazily, as "Nazi roots" or "hard right" - they think lots of things - didn't do nearly as well as people expected.

The BBC has been front and centre (but probably not far-right) in using those very terms, and other similar ones. "A party with roots in the Neo-Nazi movement", in particular, has barely been off the lips of BBC newsreaders and reporters in recent days. 

All credit to Adam then for calling them out on their laziness. 

Simon Schama tweets

Talking of the BBC's Sweden coverage, the famous Simon Schama took to Twitter just before 8 o'clock this morning to fulminate about...:

....a completely misleading report on BBC Radio 4's Today on Swedish elections as though SDs had become second biggest party - barely corrected at the end. 

I'll stick up for the BBC here because Gavin Lee's report was obviously an 'as-it-happens'-style piece beginning yesterday evening at the Sweden Democrats HQ as an early exit poll placed them second (with the SDs erupting with delight) and then returned there at the end of the report and in the early hours of this morning to say that the SDs had actually come third...

...and John Humphrys had after all introduced the whole thing by saying: 

The political face of Sweden has changed pretty dramatically in the past few years from a solidly socialist country one to where the far-right has challenged the old order. Many expected the populist Swedish Democrats to take second place in yesterday's elections. It didn't quite happen. They did take a big share of the vote, but the Prime Minister said he will not form a coalition with them. So what next?

So Simon Schama's complaint was itself rather "misleading", wasn't it? Naturally though, it provoked comments, such as this:

On the Today programme they made out that the SD had stormed to 2nd place then had to admit it came 3rd. 

Well, no, they didn't really do either of those things.

Anyhow, talk of Simon Schama reminds me of Harry & Paul's Story of the Twos and their tribute to the BBC's love for dark Scandanavian dramas:

No Winner Takes It All in Sweden

First came this tweet (yesterday) from Guardian-writing professor Christian Christensen: 

In today’s  Sweden Election, the Left Party could see gains (compared to 2014) almost as large as the far-right Sweden Democrats. But, that doesn’t really fit into “Collapsing Sweden Sees Huge Lurch To The Right” clickbait, so hardly anyone mentions it. 

Maddy Savage, one of the three BBC reporters covering the Swedish election (along with Jenny Hill and Gavin Lee), duly replied:

Very valid point. Been trying to include this when I’m interviewed on radio. One left-leaning voter sobbed on me yesterday at a polling station because she’s so sad about rise of Sweden Democrats and wants Sweden to remain “open”.

I heard that report with the sobbing voter on yesterday's The World This Weekend. It was one of those reports which left little doubt about the reporter's own position. 

And, checking TV Eyes, I've found plenty of evidence of Maddy doing just what she said she did. For example, on the BBC World Service a week ago today talking of the Left being "up" and talking of "increased support for the Green Party here" due to concerns over climate change, and she was still doing so yesterday:

Something of a curve ball. Climate change has really raced towards the top of the agenda here following the hottest summer on record here in Sweden, resulting in drought and forest fires. That's led to more support for the Green Party and the most left-wing party, the Left.

Well, the Left Party didn't get over 10%, as Professor Christensen was expecting, and Andrew Neil (for one) was noticeably less impressed with the validity of the professor's initial point:

Just as well we didn’t mention it since Left gains were much less than Far Right gains and more than offset by Green losses. SD result well below its own expectations but big enough to make it harder for mainstream parties to form stable Coalition.

And support for Maddy's Greens didn't increase either. It fell.

Re-checking TV Eyes, her World Service interviews overnight haven't included any mentions of what happened to the Greens! She did talk about the predictions that the Sweden Dempcrats might get 25% though. 

It looks as is the final results will be as follows:

The left-leaning bloc:

Social Democrats - 28.4% (down 2.6%)
Greens - 4.3% (down 2.6%)
Left - 7.9% (up 2.2%)

The right-leaning bloc:

Moderates - 19.8% (down 3.5%)
Centre - 8.6% (up 2.3%)
Christian Democrats - 6.4% (up 1.8%)
Liberals - 5.5% (up 0.1%)

And 'the far-right':

Sweden Democrats - 17.6% (up 4.7%) 

So, after all the predictions about the Sweden Democrats possibly coming first in the Swedish election, which later got downgraded to them possibly coming second, they actually came third - just as they did last time, albeit achieving the largest leap in vote share (4.7%) of all the competing parties.

So, yes, the Sweden Democrats certainly made significant gains, have complicated the coalition-making plans of the two main blocs and have put themselves in a potentially king-making situation (if - and it's a very big 'if' - the Moderates, who fell back most, and their centre-right allies, who compensated for them by gaining more ground than the Moderates lost, can bring themselves to swallow the SDs arms-length support). But, at 17.6%, the Sweden Democrats are still nearer one-sixth of the popular vote than the one-fifth (or more) people were predicting.

Still, as Fraser Nelson had been saying at the Spectator (at the start of election day yesterday), thanks to the rise of the Sweden Democrats most of the other party leaders have been "expressing views that they’d have denounced as racist not so long ago". In the process, however, the Sweden Democrats have "lost their monopoly" on discussing immigration-related problems, so "if it flops tonight", he wrote, "this might be why".

So is Jenny Hill, still sticking like a limpet to her original narrative this morning, actually correct then when she says, "The Sweden Democrats have upended the country's liberal tradition" and "Like so many other European countries Sweden, for all its liberal values, has shifted to the right"?

Jenny Goes to Sweden

Jenny Hill, in the dark with a female Syrian migrant to Sweden

Writing on Twitter, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson had this to say this morning:

Some UK newspapers today run pictures of a nutty skinhead rally in Sweden as if to illustrate a nation going Nazi. A myth hard to puncture as no one wants to say a good word about the Sweden Democrats, but it fundamentally misjudges what’s going on over there. Even BBC News describes Sweden Democrats in one sentence “has roots in neonazi movement”. Åkesson has not a single policy that is more extreme than, say, UKIP, that so recently finished no1 in UK euro elections. This is populism, but certainly not Nazism.

Indeed, the party, as per Wikipedia, has moved so far away from its Neo-Nazi beginnings that it now sits in the same group as the UK Conservative Party in the European parliament. 

Regardless of that though, the BBC's new bulletins today have been saying things like: 

Opinion polls suggest that the Sweden Democrats, who have roots in the Neo-Nazi movement, will take about 20% of the vote. 

(That was from Today's 8 o'clock news bulletin.)

One reply to Fraser's tweet read:

You say "Even BBC News" as if it comes as a surprise to you. Their portrayal of anything outside of the political norm and not of the left is described as far-right. The report by Jenny Hill was the usual one-sided garbage. 

Jenny Hill's report on Today this morning began with Peter making jokes about elections and ended with a Swedish woman who "worries about where the country is going" and, with a little prompting from Jenny, classes the Sweden Democrats as one of the "evil forces" in the country. 

In between came a short interview with a councillor for the Sweden Democrats, which, Jenny said, "began life as a Neo-Nazi party. It doesn't like the EU and it doesn't like migrants". 

She asked him such questions as:

Is it responsible as a political party to spread this kind of message of fear?

and, concerning the party's desire for a Swexit from the EU:

And having seen the political complications that Brexit is involving, does that not put you off?

Does that count as "the usual one-sided garbage?"

Jenny Hill, in a car with a Sweden Democrat politician

Well, for a fuller taste of Jenny Hill's reporting from Sweden, here's her report for last night's BBC News at Ten. 

It is textbook Jenny Hill, from the labelling to the undercutting of the right-wing politician ("even though its falling"), the loaded questions, the contrasting treatment of the two politicians,  the talk of "hundreds of thousands of people...seeking asylum on Sweden's shores" (when many if not most were migrants not asylum seekers), the choice of a sad-looking, young female Syrian refugee (rather than a male migrant) to illustrate the migrants' side of the story, and the closing imagery of a "rich, secure" Sweden imperilled by 'dragging' right-wing currents:

Viking battle re-enactor: Today we fight. 

Jenny Hill: And it's a battle for the soul of this country. As they recreate Sweden's past, populists fight the establishment for its future.

Bjorn Buttler Jakobsen, Viking enthusiast: They are the voice of the people. They are sort of taking the people's voice and putting it into politics. 

He's talking about the Sweden Democrats. Once a neo-Nazi party, they don't like the EU and they don't like migrants.

Helmuth Petersen, Sweden Democrats: This is where they live, where they live. They put cars on fire. It's very common. 

They blame them for crime, even though it's falling.

Helmuth Petersen, Sweden Democrats: If they say it's more safe now it's false, because there is much more of the gang violence, the gang rapes. Some things wasn't before, but now it's all the time. All the time.
Jenny Hill: Is it responsible as a political party, to spread this kind of message of fear?
Helmuth Petersen, Sweden Democrats: Yes, yes.
Jenny Hill: Why?
Helmuth Petersen, Sweden Democrats: It's information for the citizen.
Jenny Hill: And have you met any of the asylum seekers who still live in the town?
Helmuth Petersen, Sweden Democrats: No, no. I'm not interested. 

It's three year since hundreds of thousands of people began to seek asylum on Sweden's shores. Other issues, health, the environment dominate now, and yet it's migration which could yet change the political landscape.

Torbjorn Karlsson, Trelleborg mayor: Apparently, classical parties like we, we do not provide a vision of the future, which is really attractive, so we are doing something wrong.
Jenny Hill: Is Sweden changing as a country?
Torbjorn Karlsson, Trelleborg mayor: Well, perhaps not more than other countries, I would say. Maybe we are turning to be more like a normal European country. 

The Vikings are long gone. Perhaps Sweden's liberal era is ending too. This Syrian refugee is now part of the Viking clan. Even so, Manal knows, she tells us, there are people who don't like foreigners. "When I meet them", she says, "I tell them I'm learning Swedish, I have a job here." As political currents drag Europe to the right, even Sweden, rich, secure, may not be able to resist. Jenny Hill, BBC News, Trelleborg. 

Good Sweden/Bad Sweden

Gabriel Gatehouse's thoughtful Newsnight report on Good Sweden/Bad Sweden was discussed on the previous Open Thread. 

"As usual with GG you get the impression he is thoughtful and not really a virtue signaller like most younger reporters", wrote MB, "he seems to be coming from a previous BBC generation, the post-modernist period, when talk was of "narratives" rather than quotas and virtue. He'll probably be marked down in his annual report".

If you've not seen it yet, here it is:

Gabriel's take on the Good Sweden?/Bad Sweden? question may be boiled down to 'It's complicated', and he ends the piece by saying, "Beware the simple narrative...Don't believe everything you see on TV." 

Though it features the expected digs at Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, it strikes me as a creditable, properly balanced attempt to figure out what's actually going on in Sweden. 

Comments are enable beneath the YouTube video. The top-ranked comment reads, "BBC are bipolar. Tomorrow they will be calling somebody racist for asking the same questions".

Count your blessings!

Being the fairest blog about BBC bias (from left, right or centre) to be found anywhere on the interweb, I really must give BBC Trending supremo Mike Wendling credit for his From Our Own Correspondent piece today.

From Kate Adie's introduction, which announced that his piece would be about an anti-mass-immigration Swedish centre-right MP, I suspected a linguistically-loaded hatchet job - especially as she described him as being "strident" on the issue of immigration. 

And from Radio 4's Twitter feed I expected much the same, with it describing Mike as being "struck" by Sweden's "open politics" and "startled" by the "anti-immigration ideas" of "(immigrant) MP Hanif Bali". 

And I don't doubt for one second that this feature was meant in exactly the way that Kate Adie and BBC Radio 4's Twitter feed suggested.

And, to be honest, much as I like him, I really did suspect much the same biased intent from Mike.

But Mike Wendling's piece about the 'Swedish-Iranian' MP...

...despite him angling on, and quite openly trying to reel in, the line that it was hypocritical of Mr Bali to have been a beneficiary of Sweden's previous open immigration policy whilst now wanting to severely restrict or completely stop immigration to Sweden...

...conscientiously gave Hanif Bali his due, and didn't stray into loaded language. And as result, I now suspect that Mr Bali is thoroughly decent and well worth listening to.

Despite his Twitter feed's fixation on the badness of the alt-right, about which he's writing a book (and has promised to give me an advanced copy), Mike Wendling, BBC Trending Master of the Universe, didn't disgrace the BBC today.

Let us pray and be thankful for small mercies!

Amen.

Matthew Price depresses the nation again

Representing the Swedish health service (as per Swedish media) 

As I usually post something about The World This Weekend on a Sunday I suppose I should do so today too. 

I read a comment elsewhere before listening to it today, and as Matthew Price (a man who always sounds as if he's got the weight of the world on his SJW warrior shoulders) was presenting, I suspected the comment would ring true once I'd listened to it. 

The comment, which went into interesting detail, accused The World This Weekend of not telling the truth about the Swedish health system, of pushing the left-wing BBC view that more tax payers money is the only way forward for our NHS, and of not featuring one dissenting voice.

The commenter wrote:

Sadly for the BBC some of us are aware that the old tax payer funded NHS styled health service is no longer available in Sweden. The Swedes found it didn’t work, (surprise!). Instead doctors charge for an appointment, about £12, and a fee is paid for a hospital examination. All prescriptions are paid for. The private sector provides about 20% of public hospital care and about 30% of public primary care.

On listening to it myself I found that Matthew Price did actually say, though only in passing and rather vaguely, that Swedish people do have to pay fees and that the private sector is involved in the Swedish system. The commenter must have missed that. (In fairness, it was so short if you blinked you could have missed it). And two Tory voices - Nick Boles and Andrew Lansley - gave differing right-leaning views on the matter. 

I think the problem here is that Matthew isn't exactly Mr Cheery and is prone to emotive, 'award winning' reporting. As a result it sounded more of a SJW piece than it actually was.

Well, that's my theory anyhow. As ever, please feel free to disagree.


P.S. If you read Matthew's Twitter feed - @BBCMatthewPrice - you'll find him being very 'Matthew Price' too.

And re-tweeting pro-EU, government-bashing tweets from prominent Remainers. And backing Carrie Gracie. And linking to a controversial far-left Israel-bashing blog and calling a strongly Israel-bashing piece of its an "interesting read".

He's very 'BBC', our Matthew, isn't he?

Katty Kay and the Swedish integration minister both get things wrong

Breitbart London has a story today in which it claims that the Swedish integration minister "admits lying" to the BBC about her country's rape statistics. 

The story relates to a 100 Days interview on 22 February with Ylva Johansson:

KATTY KAY: Minister, I wanted to put to you something Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party has said about Sweden. He has called Stockholm "the rape capital of Europe, possibly even the rape capital of the world". His implication is that actually with an influx of immigrants and particularly a lot of young male immigrants, the crime rate, particularly around sexual crimes, has risen in the capital. 

YLVA JOHANSSON: He does not really know what he's talking about. When we make service about... If any woman has been... If there has been a rape towards her and sexual harassment, we can see that the level is going down and going down and going down. But we encourage women to actually report to the police and we also broaden the scope of what we define as a rape, because we would like every woman, because every rape is one rape too much. We encourage every woman to report to the police so we have a high level of reporting to the police and it is good they report and, of course, it is bad if rape is committed, but when we make service at the actual level of rapes is not high in Sweden. 

As far as Katty Kay is concerned here, she got her facts wrong there. Nigel Farage has never said any such thing about Stockholm. He's said it about Malmö, Sweden's second city. 

Is Breitbart engaging in fake news about Mrs Johansson though? (I always feel the need to check with Breitbart). 

Using Google and Google Translate, the report on what she said in Sweden's leftist tabloid Aftonbladet confirms that the Swedish minister said that she got it wrong ("It was wrong of me to talk about a development based on one year") and that official statistics show that reported rapes have risen over the last decade, and rose again last year. 

It also notes - interestingly - that the Swedish Moderates, forcing her admission (along with a similarly disbelieving criminologist and a journalist), described her BBC remarks as "fake news", and that the paper says that President Trump's comments have provoked "a major debate" in the country "on the image of Sweden and the country's potential problems of integration and crime".

It will be interesting to see if any of this gets reported by the BBC.

The cultural enrichment of Sweden

“Sweden – long proud of its humanitarian reputation and for providing asylum to refugees – has applied to the European Commission to relocate some of the migrants it has received to other EU countries. Speaking on the programme is Ylva Johansson, Swedish Employment Minister.”

So it says on the BBC Today Programme’s running order. (8:30)

Ylva sounded ever so nice. She was concerned that Sweden couldn’t cope, short-term, with mass immigration. There just aren’t enough houses and resources to accommodate them. In the long term, however, she saw immigration as one hundred percent beneficial. (For the diversity and cultural enrichment of Sweden) She seemed convinced that Swedes agree with her. One hundred percent.

I wonder if Pat Condell knows something she doesn’t?

Craig (invading Sue's post): Justin Webb's interview with Ylva Johansson was a very peculiar one. 

He stuck to asking her about whether her long term vision of the "100%" positives from mass immigration would eventually outweigh the short term difficulties over housing; whether there was any "push-back" in Sweden to the idea of mass immigration (as if he'd never looked into the matter or even heard of the surging Sweden Democrats); and whether she wanted to send a message to the UK government about helping out more with the migrant tide.

I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing.

A Saturday night smorgasbord (Part 2)

And on we go...

*****

I have to say that James O'Brien isn't growing on me as a Newsnight presenter. 

I don't appear to be alone. In recent days I've seen his interview style described (on Twitter) as varying between "patronizing questions and leading questions" and his "modus operandi" in general being characterised as "abuse, smearing and pretending he is some kind of genius". Others have been less kind. 

An example of JO'B's use of leading questions could be seen with his interview on Thursday's Newsnight with John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International on the migrant crisis - or "refugee" crisis as Mr Dalhuisen terms it. ("So the only way that this could be assuaged is for them to be, for want of a better word, welcomed?"). 

Contrast that with his later interview with UKIP's Douglas Carswell, where he pounded away, repeatedly interrupting, trying to make the point that people in low-immigrant-dense constituencies tend to be (unreasonably) anti-mass immigration. Or with his relentless interrupting of Corbynite Labour MP Cat Smith on Friday's edition.

[Vis-à-vis our Cat, our next-door-neighbour MP for Lancaster...she sounded surprisingly cocky for someone who squeaked in as a Labour MP, just defeating the sitting Tory MP (despite polls predicting she'd win by an absolute landslide)...and she only managed that thanks to the total collapse of the Lib Dems, the sharp rise of UKIP and most Lancaster voters not having the slightest clue what she actually stands for.]

Now, maybe Cat and Douglas deserved to be relentlessly interrupted by James O'Brien (they weren't admitting what he wanted them to admit), but I always think it's very bad form for a BBC interviewer to do what JO'B did to Mr Carswell on Thursday - namely contradicting him and not allowing him to respond, moving onto the other guest and changing the subject:

Douglas Carswell: We often argue in UKIP that we need an Australian type system of immigration. That is to allow us to choose people with the skills we need to come and work here and contribute. If you look at the detail of some of these figures it shows that for every one non-EU job created over the past year there have been 35 EU jobs created. That clearly suggests - unless anyone's going to suggest that Europeans are 35 times more able - it clearly suggests that actually the system we have at the moment is preventing us from recruiting the brightest and the best from around the world.  

James O'Brien: And, of course, if you look at the detail of the Australian points system you'll see that in per capita terms the rate of immigration is about twice as high as it is into Britain at the moment.... 

Douglas Carswell: It, it... 

James O'Brien [pointing at Fraser Nelson]: I just want to put to Fraser Nelson...

That's a BBC interviewer forcing his views on his audience, isn't it?

*****

Anyhow, at least we can take some satisfaction in seeing 'hard man' James O'Brien's obvious discomfort later in that same edition on having to eat a dead squirrel live on TV.

That was when Newsnight well and truly jumped the squirrel. 

And it did so courtesy of Newsnight editor Ian Katz's old chum at the Guardian, George Monbiot. 

It's not the first time Ian has invited George onto the show to air his latest moonbattery. His plans to expunge the Lake District of sheep and 're-wild' the fells got him an invite soon after Mr Katz took over. And here he was again, following on from his latest piece in the Graun extolling the thrill of eating a recently-deceased grey squirrel and his parallel dislike of conventional animal farming. 

So there was the Moonbat himself, wielding an axe and butchering a squirrel live on BBC Two, with James O'Brien looking on and then trying to eat 'one we prepared earlier'. 

James introduced George Monbiot, at the start of the show, as "the nation's favourite environmentalist".

All very odd.

*****

As this is a smorgasbord, I really ought to include something about Sweden. 

Sweden has been much in the news recently, with BBC reporter/commentator after BBC reporter/commentator noting that Sweden has taken in far more migrants per head of population than we have (a point always made at our expense).

I may be missing something but what none of those BBC reporters/commentators ever points out is that Sweden has a population of 9.5 million and an area of 449,964 km². We have a population of 64.1 million and an area of just 243,610 km². 

*****

Anyhow, matters Swedish came to the attention of other commenters about BBC bias through a recent BBC TV report from BBC Breakfast's Graham Satchell. 

It was another of those reports, featuring attractive migrants cast amid glowing Swedish scenery and various pro-immigration voices, including a Swedish mayor. It also (very briefly) featured an opposing voice, introduced as being "hard-right". 

Well, the Sweden Democrats (the party of the "hard-right" lady featured) are pretty hard-right (though much less than they used to be). However, it struck me that Graham didn't give us any political label for the featured mayor. I had to Google her to find which party she represents (the centre-left Social Democrats).

'Bias by labelling' is a common bugbear of those concerned about media bias. This was surely a case of it, wasn't it?

You may also remember Graham Satchell from his reporting of the Rotherham abuse scandal. I certainly remember one report (which I've just found again) where the Muslim angle was only mentioned in connection with fears of a backlash - an absolute BBC classic of its kind. 

*****

So far, so typical of the BBC in this smorgasbord. However, sometimes something unexpected happens....

....such as a BBC reporter expressing the view that it's a very good thing that the UK isn't part of the EU's Schengen Agreement on the free movement of people. 

That shocker came on Monday's The World at One and emerged from the mouth of the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner (about 27:35 in): 

I think that one of the problems here is that in the Schengen Area - which, thank God, Britain is not a member of - but in Schengen you can pass across border with no checks in theory...

Thank God indeed, Frank!

And if you think that's weird, please try getting your head around Jon Donnison posting a piece from a libertarian perspective, denouncing the nanny state in Australia. Yes he grounds his piece in the opinions of the only Ozzie libertarian MP, but (as is his way) JD doesn't disguise where his own sympathies lie - and they aren't where I expected them to lie:

And for me personally, I have to say Australia is without doubt one of the most rule obsessed and bureaucratic places I have ever lived.

We all know he's not a great fan of Australia but, still, criticising the country from a 'Classical liberal' position is just about the last thing I'd ever have expected from JonDon (though obviously not the last thing I'd ever have expected - which is him reporting it from a pro-Israeli position!)

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?