There’s a great scene in The West Wing where the White House is engulfed by a crisis in the Middle East and President Bartlet’s daughter, Ellie, is learning about the region at school. Her teacher, Mr Pordy, asks why there has always been conflict in the Middle East and she gives a response stressing the centuries-old conflicts over land and culture. Bartlet quotes her teacher as telling the class: ‘No. It’s because it’s incredibly hot and there’s no water.’
August is always the silly season, but this one has been sinister too
At times over the past few weeks it has seemed as if the best explanation for the heated exchanges raging across the political spectrum is the historic heatwave. Bluntly, people have had too much time, too much temperature and not enough air conditioning on their hands. Quaffing buckets of Aperol, Sancerre or Whispering Angel, the summer trifecta of drinks beloved in SW1, has not helped – quite apart from those who snort what one of my snouts calls ‘the devil’s dandruff’.
August is always the silly season, but this one has been sinister too. Everyone seems to have gone stark staring bonkers. The Jason Arday tragedy has unleashed fury among those seeking someone else to blame for his death. This has seen Zack Polanski demand state censorship of the media and led to fox-beater Jolyon Maugham denounce the Guardian for letting its black journalists do, er, journalism. It has also seen the employees of Novara Media come so dangerously close to common sense that they have been forced to record hostage videos about their sins.
Andy Burnham is out defending an advice leaflet for migrants that explains rape and sexual assault in Britain is illegal, as if this is perfectly normal behaviour by a government – and not a screaming wake-up call that we are letting the wrong people into the UK. Reform is deeply split over the person of Zia Yusuf and some of his colleagues seem to want to shoot any messenger who has the temerity to write down their thoughts. And the Tories? Where are they? Absent without leave once more.
It’s not just Britain that is experiencing political climate change. It’s boiling away in America and France too, where populists and patricians are in open war (and both the Democrats and the White House seem to have gone just as nuts over the security clearance and proximity to Donald Trump of his gatekeeper Natalie Harp).
But the consensus which has existed here for a couple of centuries – that the occasional bit of irresponsible behaviour by the media is a price worth paying for the public interest stuff, which keeps our politics generally cleaner and less corrupt than other democracies – is breaking down.
All this matters, of course, but it is also a massive summer distraction from the two key questions in British politics: can Burnham pay for what he wants to do? And: will the response of the public, the markets and the opposition parties to what he lays out this autumn mean he calls a general election for the spring?
As we discussed in our podcast today, a raft of depressing economic news has brought home just how tricky a job Burnham and Chancellor John Healey have on their hands in trying to strike a distinctive political path within the same economic straitjacket which held back Keir Starmer.
But as Burnham sets out his stall over conference season, and then the Budget, opposition leaders might want to consider aiming their microscopes, attentions and weapons at the government rather than each other and the media. We’ve had enough heat. It’s about time we got some light.
Comments