'What could be one of the most dramatic and exiting election nights since the war'

While looking for some examples of the work of the recently deceased BBC journalist John Cole, I stumbled upon this rather extraordinary video of the BBC's 1992 election coverage.

I only made it about five minutes in, but up to that point you have some pretty interesting viewing, from the overly dramatic TV graphics--which seem more 'X-Factor' than 'Serious Politics'--to the broad and diverse selection of posh accents and the effort to invest the results in Basildon with some sense of drama.

My favourite line: David Dimbleby's ringing announcement (at 1:45) that, 'Here in the studio, we've got bank after bank after bank...of computers.'

That was still the kind of thing you mentioned in 1992, apparently. (And I wonder whether your average smart phone today might be able to handle the number crunching that required those 'banks' back then.)

In any case: the BBC's exit polling in 1992 clearly left a lot to be desired.

The present is a foreign country

I haven't been reading too much in detail about UKIP -- because, well, really, who wants to spend time thinking about these people? -- but the relative success of the anti-EU, anti-immigration party in Britain's local elections last week has brought forth a new round of attention to them.

Via Max Dunbar, I discovered Andrew Rawnsley's analysis of the UKIP phenomenon, which concludes with these striking passages:

All the main parties have cause to be anxious about Ukip and so all have been trying to understand the rise of the Farageists. One way they do this is to put together focus groups of voters who have switched to Ukip to try to fathom why these people are attracted to Nigel Farage's gang. One senior party strategist says he listened in some wonderment as his focus group of Ukip voters spent an entire 90-minute session wailing and gnashing their teeth about the state of Britain. Not a good word did they have to say about the country today. At the end of the session, he thanked them for their time, and said he had one more question. Was there anything about Britain that made them feel proud? There was a silence. Then one man leant forward and said: "The past." The rest of the group nodded in agreement.

The Ukip manifesto is a nonsense of contradictions. David Cameron, Nick Clegg or Ed Miliband would be torn to shreds by the media if they ever tried to offer anything similar. Mr Farage promises tax cuts for everyone and spending increases on just about everything from building more prisons to restoring the student grant to more generous pensions. But strategists from the main parties tell me that they get nowhere when they try to discuss policy with sample groups of Ukip voters. Even when they agree that the Ukip prospectus doesn't make sense, reports one party pollster: "They just don't care about that."

A Ukip vote is not mainly, if at all, about making a choice based on an assessment of policy. More than anything, it is about expressing an emotion – usually a feeling of intense rage about how Britain has changed and how they are served by the established political parties. It is a howl against the modern world, a scream against the establishment. There's no arguing with that. Or, if there is a way of dealing with it, none of the main parties has yet discovered what it is.

The politics of Kulturpessimismus have a long and not very encouraging history.

Dunbar, by way of addressing a claim made by Dan Hodges at the Telegraph that the results disprove the existence of a 'progressive majority' in the UK, himself points to grounds for a different kind of pessimism: that about finding an effective response to Farageism:

In fact, there are plenty of progressives in this country. They’re just not in politics. As I’ve argued recently, British politics is not a place for reasonable people anymore. Smart progressives who want to make a difference don’t go into politics, they go into public policy or advocacy or journalism or law or the police or the Royal Marines. Because smart people are leaving politics, the field is left clear for maniacs, illiterates, thieves, neo-Nazis and toytown power merchants. This is particularly true at local level.

And it’s not true, by the way, that UKIP represent an ‘anti-politics party’. UKIP are more pro politics than anyone. They encourage huge unrealistic expectations of what politics can deliver. Vote for me and I’ll give you everything you want or need, your darkest fear, your fondest dream.

I don't know enough about the contemporary British political scene to make any deeply reasoned judgements about the above claims.

But I must say, I'm not feeling very optimistic.

From the thrilling days of anti-bluebell bolshevism

If for no other reason, I am thankful Facebook exists because I may not otherwise have been made aware (by my friend Chris) of this wonderful quote from the diaries of the late Queen Mother (recently published, edited by William Shawcross), apparently from 1924, when she would have been in her early 20s:

“I am extremely anti-Labour. They are so far apart from fairies and owls and bluebells & Americans & all the things I like. If they agree with me, I know they are pretending – in fact I believe everything is a pretence to them.”

This seems a tad extreme: given her extensive list of likes and dislikes -- many of them quite sensible --  I'm sure that there would have been at least some common ground to be found with Labour, even with its radical anti-bluebell faction:

“I like so many things”, the Duchess of York enthused in an early letter to [D'Arcy] Osborne, “fairy stories, fat butlers, porters, the smell of tangerines, suave Orientals, a good tune, lovely colours, French accents, puppies, bath salts, & a million more”. She disliked fewer things, but heartily. “Tactlessness annoys me – also rudeness . . . crass stupidity, & people who are pleased with themselves. Also spiders, caterpillars, slugs, frogs, toads, loud voices & nasty coughs”. 

I mean, who doesn't like puppies, suave Orientals and French accents?

Bobbies, good and bad

I was pleased today to receive the print version of my latest article on the history of inter-war policing in Britain: 'Press, Politics and the "Police and Public" Debates in Late 1920s Britain', Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History and Societies, vol. 16, no. 1 (2012): pp. 75-98.

Since its closely related to the topic of my forthcoming book, The Most Remarkable Woman in England, I go on about it a little at the other blog. 

Which you should check out anyway, if you haven't already.

And tell your friends.

And so on.

Who reads the readers?

There are, off the top of my head, several hundred things I'd rather do than read Tony Blair's memoir.

This isn't out of any particular dislike for the man; indeed, I find it difficult generating any significant emotion toward him one way or another, at least one strong enough to make me want to wade through more than 600 pages of political prose and...yes, sex scenes.

But I've found it can be very enjoyable to read people who have been reading him, such as this post and ensuing discussion at Blood & Treasure.

In particular, I like the suggestion that the book may reveal Blair's 'hidden shallows'.

British election results

'The eyes of Caligula...'

History might not repeat itself, but it might rhyme:
While I'm appalled at the idea suggested by the Sun that electing a posh white boy to the PMship is somehow equivalent to electing a black man to the presidency of the US, I do find the parallels in these images somehow more important.

Do all key Conservatives have such droopy eyes?

Well, with the return of Conservative dominance and judging by the 1980s, the 2011s should be a great era for British music...

Cool.

(Source; Title reference)

Notes from the Westminster village fair

Count on the wandering Dutchman to bring some joy into these dour proceedings:

Watching the debates in the UK they had the feel of a village fair with commoners asking direct questions of villages grandees uhming and ahming while showing understanding why Mr Porter’s apple tree should be chopped because Mrs Stewart’s vegetable garden next door was not getting enough sunshine.

[...] Needless to say, none of them [i.e., Gordon, Nick or Dave] would stand a chance of becoming chancellor of Germany. In fact, none of them would even be allowed to rent a flat in Germany: separating garbage into black, green and blue wheelie-bins is a criterion for entering Germany. Why else do you think eastern Europeans steal jobs in the UK and not Germany? There is a reason why shops are closed on Sundays here and you’re not allowed to dispense your bottles at the bottle bank at noon. Annoying little rules are far more effective than the most gruelling citizenship exams (which is why the German one is a joke, if you’re that desperate, they will have you).

On that last point, reader, I can only concur.

A bit black over Bill's mother's

I am, I freely admit, perhaps the last person whose political instincts you should trust.

When I became a German citizen last year, it was just in time to vote in the September federal elections. Given my political leanings, I had two options: the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens.

(I must say in passing that I feel fortunate, as there are two mainstream parties in this country that -- despite various frustrations and discontents with each of them -- I can vote for, with at least some degree of conviction and enthusiasm.)

Anyway, I was, in the end, convinced to give both my votes to the SPD because: 1) I thought they hadn't done nearly as bad a job of governing as the general opinion held (so, they had my sympathies) 2) I wanted to ensure that the Liberals (FDP) didn't make into government 3) I sought to strengthen the SPD against the competition they were facing from further left (Die Linke) and 4) I felt satisfaction in voting -- for the first time in my life -- for a genuinely social democratic party with a tradition reaching back into the nineteenth century whose history, all-in-all, I think holds up quite well.

The result of that election: the SPD had its lowest vote ever in a federal election and the FDP and Die Linke had their highest.

I am truly someone with his finger on the pulse of German political opinion.

Still, in retrospect I feel a certain sense of vindication, partly since the government that did come into power has, largely because of the FDP, become a bit of a (bad) joke. But it is also partly down to the (perhaps sentimental) feeling of having 'voted my conscience', since, to be honest, I hadn't really studied the pros and cons of any major party's policies on pensions or health insurance reform.

These somewhat random thoughts are inspired by another election, one taking place today across the sleeve.

My connection to the British political world is, in one sense, rather abstract, since I don't live there but merely work there. (And, as things are looking, this connection may soon become more abstract still.)

Nonetheless, I've been paying attention to this short but intense campaign (the one main virtue of British elections is that they are mercifully brief): this has partly been because of getting swept up in the issue 'on location' from my various regular haunts in London and partly out of the usual mixture of personal and professional motivations that keep my attention glued to that oddly compelling little North Sea archipelago.

(Moreover as someone who -- in a former job -- sought vainly to explain to German law students the intricacies of the 'unwritten' (or, more precisely, partly-written) British constitution, I'm as fascinated as anyone to see how it holds up if it should come to that situation described by the wonderful phrase 'a hung parliament'.)

And I've also been paying attention to the opinions of friends and of the fellow bloggers I regularly read on the election.

It's a bit of a mixed bag.

I've found that one (somewhat older) friend in London will be voting Tory for the first time in his life as a result of a fairly unhinged rage at New Labour that, to be honest, I find a bit hard to comprehend (not the anger, but rather the intensity and consequences). I've heard a couple of others say that they're leaning toward the Liberals now that it looks like that vote won't be a complete waste. Norm is supporting Labour, on the basis of social justice. Ken McLeod sides with Labour as 'Labour is still the only party that the British working class has come up with.' Geoff thinks the Liberal Democrats deserve a chance. Francis offers some thoughtful and personal perspective the issue and urges, with the aim of electoral reform, a strong vote for the Lib Dems.

It is that issue (along with their, by British standards, remarkably unconstipated view of 'Europe') that, in my view, makes the Lib Dems certainly appealing.

Still....

At a conference in Belgium recently, a conversation with a dear friend and colleague turned to politics. Somewhat wearily, he admitted that his political commitments had cooled somewhat over the years. If I recall correctly, he said he had essentially boiled them down to the relatively straightforward principle that he will vote for that party which will likely, however slightly, move Britain's level of inequality closer to that of Sweden and further away from that of Brazil.

I've been thinking about this ever since, in the context of considering my own declining political expectations, and I find this a perfectly sensible position. It (along with my irrational and sentimental attachment to family history) tends to move my support, however virtual, slightly toward Labour.

But I think that Francis may have it right when he concludes:

I have every confidence that the people of Britain will following this general election get the government they deserve. And it will at best be mediocre.

It's a very gloomy day here on our bit of the Rhine. I hope it's a bit more cheerful on the Thames, Mersey, Humber and Tyne (and wherever else) for those of you off to the polling stations.

Given the problems we (as in we Europeans and human beings) face, I think we're going to need all the cheering up we can find.

(Title reference)

[UPDATE] It seems I may have somewhat misrepresented Francis's argument. Which he explains clearly here.

Organising a piss-up in a brewery

British-election-related quote of the day, via The Economist (which also makes the good point that for a debate on 'foreign affairs' the discussion was strangely parochial):

A Labour MP I know tells a story about the young Tony Blair, campaigning in a tough council housing estate years before he was famous and powerful. At the time, Labour was still promoting a platform of more cordial relations with the Soviet Union, and nuclear disarmament. According to this (supposedly true) story, the young Mr Blair began explaining to an elderly woman that only Labour could avert nuclear armageddon. "Can Labour stop the yobs peeing in the lift?" she replied. Mr Blair waffled, sticking to his lines about disarmament. "Young man," said the voter severely. "If Labour can't stop them peeing in the lifts, how are they going to stop a nuclear war?"

Perhaps perversely, I tend to think that the latter is, somehow, easier to prevent than the former.

Discuss.

'Something is better than nothing'

While watching last night's second leaders' debate (in all its digital wide-screen glory, as the house where I stay when in London is appropriately decked-out for this telly-obsessed culture), I was reminded of an essay that I had coincidentally read earlier this week.

I'd found a sharply reduced copy of Tony Judt's book Reappraisals (at the browseworthy Waterstone's on Gower Street....a cheap paperback is also available, I noticed today, at the also wonderful Judd Books) which appealed to me immediately, as I'm working my way (slowly) through his excellent Postwar.

The first essay that caught my eye (because I'm interested in this kind of issue) was entitled 'The Good Society: Europe vs. America', a review (originally published in the NY Review of Books) of books by Jeremy Rifkin, T.R. Reid and Timothy Garton Ash on the European Union.

It's a nicely balanced examination of 'Europe' in the sense of the -- alternatively inspiring and exasperating -- supra-national political entity that has emerged over the last half century (and it presages themes picked up on by Judt more recently).

I thought of it last night because of the apparent perception that Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg faces a problem for being a bit too Europhile.

(Not that the EU is uncomplicatedly or wildly popular in other European countries, but in Britain opposition to it takes on a special quality.)

Judt is clearly positively disposed toward the EU, but one of the things I liked about his review was his sober scepticism towards the more high-flown claims for the EU's potential, especially Rifkin's description of Europe as 'a giant freewheeling experimental laboratory for rethinking the human condition....':

These claims are absurd. The European Union is what it is: the largely unintended product of decades of negotiations by Western European politicians seeking to uphold and advance their national and sectoral interests. That's part of its problem: It is a compromise on a continental scale, designed by literally hundreds of committees.

Actually this makes the EU more interesting and in some ways more impressive than if it merely incarnated some uncontentious utopian blueprint. In the same vein, it seems silly to write, as Rifkin does, about the awfulness of American mediocrity without acknowledging Europe's own eyesores. This is a man who has never stared upon the urban brutalism of Sarcelles, a postwar dormitory town north of Paris; who has not died a little in Milton Keynes; who has avoided the outer suburbs of Modern Milan.

Having spent nearly a decade seeing both some of the highs and lows of my adopted home-continent -- and having 'died a little in Milton Keynes' on a regular basis -- I can appreciate Judt's point here.

Nonetheless, Judt expresses eloquently why -- for all its occasional frustrations and absurdities -- the EU is far more worthwhile than it is often perceived to be, explaining why, if it can manage to 'speak with a single voice in international affairs, the EU will wield a lot of power':

The reason is not that the EU will be rich or big -- though it already is both. The U.S. is rich and big. And one day China may be richer and bigger. Europe will matter because of the cross-border template upon which contemporary Europe is being constructed. ... Globalization is about the disappearance of boundaries -- cultural and economic boundaries, physical boundaries, linguistic boundaries -- and the challenge of organizing our world in their absence. In the words of Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the UN's director of peacekeeping operations: 'Having lost the comfort of our geographical boundaries, we must in effect rediscover what creates the bond between humans that constitute a community.'

To their own surprise and occasional consternation, Europeans have begun to do this: to create a bond between human beings that transcends older boundaries and to make out of these new institutional forms something that really is a community. They don't always do it very well, and there is still considerable nostalgia in certain quarters for those old frontiers. But something is better than nothing; and nothing is just what we shall be left with if the fragile international accords, treaties, agencies, laws and institutions that we have erected since 1945 are allowed to rot and decline -- or, worse, are deliberately brought low. As things now stand, boundary breaking and community making are something that Europeans are doing better than anyone else.

Heavy thoughts, perhaps, for a Friday night in a hotel bar in central London.

But I'm looking forward to crossing some frontiers tomorrow on a train that will take me through four countries (and languages) to a home that I'm missing very much at the moment.

And not, primarily, for political reasons.

Clegg captures German votes, hearts

British-German relations would, you might think, be pretty far down the scale of Vital Issues in the current British election.

Yet, they were curiously introduced into the (surprisingly lively) campaign trail via a 2002 article by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

When an MEP, Clegg wrote what I find to be a quite insightful and personal reflection on British attitudes toward Germany. Although this is hardly news, perhaps, he quite effectively uses memories of a student exchange trip to highlight how those attitudes have remained largely mired in the Second World War.

And he concludes thus:

All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. I wish Mr Puhle and Mr Sawartzki well. We need to be put back in our place.

This might have remained largely in the archives had Mr. Clegg not emerged as a surprisingly popular figure, according to polls, after what was seen as his strong performance in the first party leaders' debate.

As a result of that, the above passage was worked into one of those typically subtle Daily Mail headlines: 'Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain'.

And you can find plenty of frothy outrage in the comments that followed.

Still, Clegg can look on the bright side, having no doubt wrapped up the German vote, which is, of course, decisive in every British election.

Actually, it's been odd being in London during this whole 'controversy', not least watching the Conservative papers turning in goose lock-step yesterday to aim their fire in Clegg's direction and, today, to annoint David Cameron as the clear victor in last night's second debate. (From the Labour side, the Mirror's headline 'One foot in the Dave' has the same quality: today's headlines are analysed at the New Statesman here.)

Being familiar with two other countries (Germany and the US) where most of the mainstream press tends to observe at least a surface-level neutrality in its campaign coverage, the Pravda-like partisan contortions of the British papers is pretty breathtaking.

Carry on Westminster

Now, I'm all for efforts to spice up what has so far been a pretty lacklustre pre-election election season in Britain: but is it just me or is there something a bit...desperate?...about the Guardian's 'three-way swingometer'?

What's next, electoral key parties?

The Cameron Variations

Even if the Internet never comes up with another Fun Thing as good as the David Cameron poster creation machine, then it's nevertheless established its Daseinsberechtigung.

I mean, the original is humourous enough.

But the variations....

I'm quite fond of Cthulhu, Absorbency and...um...Kittens.

The following isn't nearly as funny, but it was the first thing that occurred to me.



Thanks to the Ranter for bringing this to my attention and for discussing it so (expectedly) well.

Ambulances, riot vans ....

... it's all go over at Auntie's.

And of course the Guardian live blogs every time a policewoman clad in a day glow jerkin scratches her bum.

At the risk of sounding facetious: The only way to really piss off the ugly little man is to give him short shrift. Ignore him.

Our week in Conservatism: From the age of Supermac to the era of...Dave and Boris

Our research trip to London last week happened to coincide with the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

From what I can tell, it seems that David Cameron's Tories are indeed making progress in their main electoral strategy, i.e., hanging around long enough for voters to get sick of Labour while pretending that they've truly and genuinely changed and now really do care about poor people and, actually, quite like foreigners.

Whatever. The bits I saw left me underwhelmed, but, you know, I suppose I'm not really their target audience.

Anyway, coincidentally, while looking up information on a murder trial in 1959, I ran across a series of deeply creepy and Orwellian very charming newspaper adverts for Harold Macmillan's Conservative Party.

The worst best of them was the following (click image for a larger version):

(From: The News of the World, 30 August 1959, p. 7)

To avoid any misunderstanding: I've posted this out of purely historical interest and not as an endorsement of any kind.

In case you were wondering.

Quite incidentally: probably the most entertaining -- though not the most sane -- moments of the conference that I caught on television were offered right at its beginning by London mayor Boris Johnson.

Since the hotel where we were residing offers its guests free copies of the Daily Rage, I was able to read the following delightful paragraph over breakfast:

Boris was, according to a contemporary, an unmissable figure around Oxford, 'the silverback gorilla, the alpha male', who Cameron, as a socially gauche backroom boy with undeclared political ambitions, must have looked up to in awe.

Boris was also involved with the most beautiful girl at Oxford of the era, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, which increased his celebrity.

It was at about that point that said breakfast (full English, of course) nearly ended up all over our table.