Rod Liddle

If I had been given the vote at the age of 16, I would have put my cross beside the name of the Communist party candidate, assuming that he was not a tankie. If he was, I would have had to think long and hard; a left-wing Labour candidate might well have been preferable. I was a moderate within the CP, you see – a fan of the Italian Communist party leader, Enrico Berlinguer – and I had no time for the wretched Stalinists who, swaddled in dystopian nostalgia, comprised a broad rump of the British party. They were nicknamed tankies because they thoroughly approved of Soviet interventions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). I was what was then called a Eurocommunist. I knew my stuff too.

I think I have just located Peak Guardian. It can be found on page 57 of the newspaper’s latest Saturday magazine, ‘Saturday’. And it rests under the headline: ‘Should we give babies the right to vote?’ In the piece, a woman called Laura Spinney advances the case for ‘ageless voting’. She accepts that a common first reaction to ageless voting is ‘laughter’. But the woman adds: ‘Then people start to think and often they end up saying they can’t find any serious objections.’ Later she expands upon her thesis: ‘…children are observant and can ask questions that are troubling because they are so fundamental: questions about war, meat, money, love and death’. You just knew that meat would in there somewhere, didn’t you?

It’s surely time we dropped our cynicism and got behind the government’s National Abortion Drive, another noble attempt to kickstart our floundering economy. The United Kingdom has made great strides of late in this area, recently overtaking France in the number of abortions performed annually, the figures showing the largest increase since this sort of stuff was legalised. The door, then, is already ajar. All we need to do is push a little. Our elected representatives were intent on doing just that this week by voting for an amendment that will now decriminalise abortion right up to the day of birth. I don’t wish to seem churlish, but to me this demonstrates a marked lack of imagination and ambition.

I don’t monitor this stuff all the time. It would be soul destroying. All that happens is that I tune in, often by accident, and there is something which once again betrays the long term, institutional, anti-Israel bias of the BBC. So, Friday night’s television news and the Middle East Correspondent Lucy Williamson. Reporting on the Israeli rocket attack upon Iran’s nuclear bases, Lucy told us that Israel ‘says’ Iran is working towards a nuclear bomb. Attribution, you see. Let us hear what the International Atomic Energy Agency had to say in its report on 9 June this year.

You may have noticed that for some while the BBC News people have stopped referring to Reform UK as ‘far right’ or ‘hard right’. That’s not because Nigel Farage has tacked to the left a little on such policies as nationalisation; one characteristic of the left is that if they consider you ‘far right’, they will not commend anything you say, even if they fervently agree with it. You will never gain their favour, even if you join Greta Thunberg on her stupid and narcissistic boat expedition to Gaza and then pronounce your solidarity with all trans folk. This is one of the mistakes often made by people who are right of centre and have said or done something that has aroused the fury of the left-wing mob.

I am hugely saddened by the death of Patrick O’Flynn. He was a man who epitomised decency, kindness, gentlemanly conduct and, above all, a sense of duty. Rest in peace, Paddy. You were the best of men I first met him when he stood for parliament for the Social Democratic party (SDP) in Peterborough in 2019. It was a hugely disappointing campaign for us (as indeed most of them are, but this one particularly). He knew he was fighting a forlorn battle, but threw himself into the campaigning with total commitment and – as ever – graciousness. Not to mention a certain grim gallows humour. That he stood at all speaks volumes for the man. He knew he would lose – and lose badly. He had already been the MEP for the area for both UKIP and the SDP, so he had nothing to prove.

Gary Lineker is off then, much to the BBC’s relief. It is moot as to whether it was his resoundingly stupid views on Israel and Gaza that did the trick, or his criticism of the direction in which Match of the Day seems to be heading (and about which I think he is right). Lineker brings an easy lightness of touch to a sport which is full of pomposity Lineker may have the depth of geopolitical knowledge of a plastic tea tray, but he has been a superlative presenter, bringing an easy lightness of touch to a sport which is full of too much pomposity, hubris and faux expertise to be bearable.