UK Politics

Spot The Bully – Journalism or Government?

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

SPS Polis 2014 journalism conference

The POLIS 2014 Journalism Conference, held on the campus of the London School of Economics, played host to a number of luminaries from the British media establishment and debated some important issues. But among the various items on the agenda – including riveting discussions on the methods and ethics of investigative journalism, an interview with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and a forum on the use of social media in the newsroom – was a slightly incongruous, strangely titled session.

In the second session of the day, the panel – comprised of chair Anne McElvoy (BBC and The Economist), Annette Dittert (German broadcaster ARD), Michael Crick (Channel 4 News) and Ed Lucas (The Economist) debated the following topic:

Journalism after Snowden: Watchdog or thug?

In the wake of the Snowden story and the Leveson Inquiry into the press, we ask whether British journalism is to supine or too aggressive? Was the publication of state secrets justified?

SPS_Polis2014_01

Semi-Partisan Sam, attending the POLIS Journalism Conference for the first time, took the opportunity to ask the following question of the panel:

QUESTION – Given the facts: that Reporters Without Borders downgraded the UK from 29th to 33rd in the World Press Freedoms rankings for 2014;  that the British government now assumes the right to stop and detain partners and relatives of journalists at Heathrow airport under grossly misapplied anti-terror laws; that the Prime Minister last year saw fit to dispatch his Cabinet Secretary to the offices of a major national newspaper in order to threaten it with closure unless they desisted with the publication of materials embarrassing to the government; and that the government forced that same newspaper to destroy their privately owned computers and hard drives under the watchful presence of intelligence and GCHQ officers – why are we sitting here having an introspective debate about whether or not journalists are behaving like thugs when the real thug is clearly the bullying, heavy-handed British government?

The question was extremely well received among the attendees in the hall, prompting a significant round of applause from delegates. Sadly, this did not translate into a a full or robust answer from the panel, who at times had been happier to wander off-topic and waste time debating side issues such as America’s merits as a country and the proper role of the intelligence services.

The panel’s complete answer – such as it was – to the question can be seen in the video below (Semi-Partisan Sam is “the gentleman” referred to by Anne McElvoy):

The Economist’s Ed Lucas, an enthusiastic apologist for anything and everything that the government decides to do in the name of ‘security’, was obviously unsympathetic to the idea that the British government has displayed thuggish behaviour. But since even Lucas was unable to justify what the government has been caught doing without public knowledge or consent, he instead diverted attention by building up and then destroying a straw-man argument of his own creation – namely that those who speak out against government persecution of journalists who expose overreach by the security services are somehow naive pacifists who want to abolish the military and the intelligence services entirely.

Lucas said: “If you want to have a country which has no intelligence and security services, where there are no state secrets or no penalty for stealing state secrets, then fine – I guess that may be the world that the Green Party would like. I suspect it’s a minority point of view.”

This is a patently false and absurd proposition. No serious critic of the British or American governments as pertaining to their secretly allowing their security services to infringe on citizen privacy is suggestion that GCHQ, MI6, the CIA or NSA be disbanded, and Lucas insults our intelligence to cast this aspersion. The issue is not whether we have security and intelligence services, but the lengths to which we as a society are prepared to let them act in our interest.

The other fatuous argument sometimes made by apologists – and indeed by Ed Lucas himself during this same session – goes along the lines of: “Why are people so surprised that we have spies, and that they are involved in acts of spying?” Again, this is a deliberate and misleading attempt to change the terms of the debate. Citizens fully understand the need for foreign and domestic intelligence, but they also have the right to expect that the technology and bureaucracy of surveillance will not be turned inwards upon themselves. While no one expects (or demands) a list of current surveillance targets to be posted and regularly updated on the  internet, the public should have input as to the criteria for targeting through the democratic process.

It is a rather sad statement on the current status of British journalism that the only panellist to seriously engage with the question and agree that it is government – not the press – who have been acting the bully, was Annette Dittert from German broadcaster ARD.

Even the panel chair, Anne McElvoy, felt the need to reframe the question and make the unsubstantiated claim that Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, had been carrying “shedloads of secrets with him” when he was detained at Heathrow airport, and that rather than being an outrage, this was just one of the “more difficult areas” where the public “might begin to have some doubts” and feel that the government has a case to answer.

In her response, Dittert correctly identified the apathy of the British people as being partly responsible for the lack of public outcry at the Edward Snowden revelations, saying that Britain has an “almost romantic relationship with the security services” – our experiences of the fictional James Bond being somewhat different to the German experience of the Stasi.

Responding to the question, Dittert said: “I thought it was really concerning – the Prime Minister threatening in the House of Commons a newspaper and journalists … in case they go on publishing is something that shouldn’t happen in a democracy.”

Dittert then went on to describe the way that The Guardian newspaper was treated as being “entirely wrong”.

It is profoundly worrying that even at a prestigious journalism conference such as POLIS 2014, so few of the attendees (and only one of the panellists – a German television correspondent) felt able to push back against the notion that it is the journalistic profession that has become the bully and the thug rather than the British government, whose track record on secrecy, paranoia and intimidation speaks for itself.

And while the POLIS 2014 conference was excellent, the fact that the whole day passed with virtually no observance or mention of the harrassment and intimidation of the British press by the goverment will only reinforce the belief that the establishment media with their well-connected sources and comfortable positions within the Westminster bubble are, at times, quite incapable of holding to account the government that they simultaneously both depend on and fear.

England In The United Kingdom

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

SPS_BBC_politics_section

Above is a screenshot taken from the Politics section of the BBC News website.

There are clear and clickable links leading to separate sections for Northern Irish politics, Welsh politics and Scottish politics. However, the largest nation within the United Kingdom is given the more cryptically condescending heading “Around England”, which cannot be clicked and which does not lead to its own dedicated section.

Furthermore, clicking on the obscure “Political analysis around England” link leads to the the following badly laid-out page listing the BBC’s English political editors by region (presumably outdated since it was last updated nearly three years ago):

SPS_BBC_politics_section_2

Who made the decision to slice and dice our United Kingdom in this way when it comes to political coverage? Who decided on behalf of the British population that the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish should see their politics primarily at a national level, while the English must be given news at a regional basis?

More importantly, is this discrepancy in political coverage a result of  organisational efficiency (so that political editors cover “patches” roughly equal in population, for example) or is it for another, perhaps more sinister reason?

The answer, of course, is that the BBC’s way of splitting its political coverage is merely a reflection of the way that the political elite want us to see ourselves – with all of the home nations save England deserving of a degree of individual recognition and autonomy.

But this way of organising news coverage – and structuring our political system – does everyone a disservice. People living in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland are denied the chance to view or shape events in their respective nations from anything other than a macro level, while English residents are not given the chance to look at issues which affect England in particular.

At a time when the Scottish people have a referendum to determine their future participation in the United Kingdom, and issues of devolution of power are coming increasingly to the fore, why does the BBC persist with a political reporting structure that is fundamentally out of touch with the sentiment of the country?

On Wednesday 23rd April, England will celebrate – or at least observe – St. George’s Day. This blog would not be surprised if there was a significant popular backlash or uprising of English nationalist sentiment around this time, given the fact that so much of our leaders’ energies are currently taken up talking about how best to cater to the needs of Scotland while the West Lothian question remains – as ever – conspicuously unaddressed.

Of course, if a debate does bubble to the surface around this time, it could well be diffused into obscurity by the BBC’s eleven English regional political editors.

Nigel Farage vs The Politically Correct Line On Russia

Samuel Hooper1 Comment
Attempts to sink Nigel Farage tend to fail
Attempts to sink Nigel Farage tend to fail

 

In the aftermath of last week’s debate on Britain’s place in the European Union, UKIP leader Nigel Farage had gall to say that he admired the tactics of the despotic Russian president Vladimir Putin. Not that he admired Putin as a person, agreed with his annexation of Crimea or supported his policies in any way, mind you – just that he thought Vladimir Putin had played a good hand and used methods both conventional and shady to advance the national interest of his country.

To hear Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s subsequent shrieks of outrage, quickly repeated and parroted thoughtlessly by numerous political commentators and talking heads, you would think that Nigel Farage had whipped a large Soviet flag out from behind his podium and paraded up and down with it during the debate, singing  the State Anthem of the USSR at the top of his lungs (incidentally, it’s a cracking piece of music).

The second live televised Leader’s Debate on the EU will take place tonight, and given the establishment media’s heroic efforts last week to spin the results of the first as a victory for the hapless Nick Clegg – until overwhelming reality and the results of a YouGov poll made their position indefensible and forced a sudden reassessment of Farage’s performance – this blog aims to clear the fog of war which still threatens to obscure what Nigel Farage actually said (eminently reasonable) and what he has subsequently been accused of saying (treachery).

Here is what Nigel Farage actually said, when asked by Alastair Campbell which world leader he most admired:

“As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin. The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically. How many journalists in jail now?”

 The recognition of Putin’s moral failings and outrage at Russia’s insidious suppression of free speech was not enough to save Farage from what followed. The point was clearly that Russia has been running rings around a hopelessly divided (and in some cases, morally equivalent) international community, not that Russia pursued a just or worthy course of action.

Nick Clegg chose to see it somewhat differently:

“It shows quite how extreme people can be like Nigel Farage when their loathing of the European Union becomes so all-consuming that they even end up siding with Vladimir Putin in order to make their point.

The only reason we are able to seek to exert any influence – and it is difficult enough as it is – on Vladimir Putin is because we can act with the clout of being part of the economic superpower that is the European Union, upon which Russia depends a lot.”

A heady mix of deliberate misrepresentation and the sadly typical denigration and talking down of Britain’s capacity to act in it’s own interests on the world stage such as this would be remarkable coming from anyone other than the Liberal Democrat leader and our Deputy Prime Minister.

Clegg and Farage

 

Former Conservative Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind also loses the plot over Farage’s comments, railing against the UKIP leader in his uniquely blustering, pompous style:

How very revealing. When asked which world politician he most admires, Nigel Farage chooses, of all people, Vladimir Putin. While others might have sought a successor to Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela, Farage fawns over an autocrat who has made Russia the least free country in Europe – a man who locks up his political opponents and has just invaded his neighbour, annexing part of its territory.

Rifkind also chooses to go with the trusty trick of blatant misrepresentation. Nigel Farage was clear to add the caveat “as an operator, but not as a human being” before making his comments about Russia’s effective foreign policy. Those key words by Farage, which place his remarks in context and which came literally right before the ones that Rifkind quoted to support his diatribe, seemed to sail past his ears unnoticed.

Rifkind then goes on to miss the point entirely:

[Farage’s] irresponsibility has not just been restricted to Putin’s behaviour in Ukraine. He described Putin’s policy on Syria as “brilliant”. Does he not realise that Russia has vetoed every resolution in the UN Security Council that was aimed at pressing Assad to end his murderous violence – which has led to the deaths of over 140,000 Syrian men, women and children? Does he not know that without Russian arms supplies, the Assad regime would have been forced to negotiate an end to the civil war two years ago?

Again, we see the deliberate, false equating of Farage’s admiration of the brilliant execution of an terrible policy with actual support for that policy. But the two are clearly not one and the same, no matter how much the prevailing climate of political correctness may insist that because something is judged by the collective to be bad, all aspects of it must be denounced as equally terrible and any positive aspects be purged from discussion and memory.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea is outrageous and terrible – on that much, nearly everyone aside from Russia agrees. But to stop at saying that is not enough for the politically correct pundits of today. In this world, because Russia has done this terrible thing and made itself persona non grata in the international community, we all must now say that everything about Russia is bad, and never acknowledge any good until we are told by our superiors that it is safe to do so.

To be fair, Russia makes this task quite simple. Through their domestic and foreign policies on any number of issues, that country has placed itself on the wrong side of human rights, freedom of speech and even the arc of history. The lamentable implosion of Russia’s nascent democracy is well known, as are the stories about increasing suppression of free speech, the government takeover of the media and Russia’s appalling record on civil rights for gay people. But why must all of these misdeeds be meticulously restated before a British politician can say the truth – that despite Russia being completely wrong on all of these issues, they played their foreign policy hand really well in support of their own national interests?

Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley hits the nail on the head in support of Nigel Farage’s right to say the blindingly obvious:

Farage’s sin was to say that he admires Putin as a political leader, although not as a human being. Why this is controversial, I have literally no idea. Farage made it abundantly clear that he regards the Russian leader as a despot (“How many journalists in jail now?”); he simply thinks that he outwitted Obama on Syria. I think that; you think that; even Obama probably thinks that … Ah, but you can’t say such things out loud because the consensus in Westminster right now is that Putin is Hitler, Ukraine is the Sudetenland and anything less that outright Russophobia is treachery. And probably a little bit homophobic.

Precisely. Believing that Putin outwitted other world leaders in terms of the response to the awful situation in Syria does not imply support for Putin’s position, just as believing he is currently one step ahead with regard to Ukraine does not mean that Nigel Farage wants Russia’s gamble to succeed.

Tim Stanley continues, giving a brilliant summation of the current problem with British political discourse:

And that’s Farage’s real sin: he dares to be different. Contemporary British politics works by an unusual degree of consensus. All three party leaders want to stay in the EU, all wish to preserve the principle of the welfare state, all back gay marriage, all accept the need to go green, none will challenge the concept of open borders on immigration. Some or all of these positions may well be right – that’s not the issue. The issue is that this homogeneity of opinion is fundamentally undemocratic. In democracies, voters are supposed to be offered real choices rather than one establishment philosophy spun three different ways. To make matters worse, the party leaders now not only sound alike but also lookalike.

This much is true, and scarily so. The sad fact is that the British political elite have imposed a consensus on society that the people themselves have not yet reached. For good or ill (okay, for ill) there is a large rump of opinion within the British population that would bring back the death penalty in a heartbeat, scrap the new legalisation of gay marriage, become Fortress Britain for immigrants seeking the right to work, and undertake any number of other regressive policies. But in Britain the elite went ahead and determined the “correct” answer to all of these issues on behalf of the people but without seeking their input, and so the debate is continually suppressed – except for when it bubbles to the surface manifested as support for the insurgent or extremist parties.

Contrast the situation in Britain with that in the United States. The political debate there is no more enlightened or informed, but there is still the sense that they debate important issues, often from diametrically opposing viewpoints. The US senate hears strident views from such diverse characters as self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, the senior senator from Vermont, as well as the fire-and-brimstone filibusterings of Tea Party darling Ted Cruz. And people with views anywhere within this spectrum are made to feel welcome in the political debate. As a result, though the American process is a lot slower, louder and more contentious, when political unanimity is finally reached (and it takes a long time – civil rights has more or less just crossed the line, with gay rights looking at another 30 years of toil) it is much more strongly reflected in the people, and is consequently much more likely to stick.

The difference could not be clearer – a lively national debate where everyone feels they can speak and be heard, or the stultifying restrictions of an artificial consensus imposed by the political elite.

Now faced with a politician who refuses to follow the approved talking points on Russia, these weasely politicians who came scurrying out of the woodwork to denounce Nigel Farage over his comments are deliberately misleading the public and attempting to change the narrative. Hell, let’s call a spade a spade – they are lying, deliberately lying to the British people in the political establishment’s latest doomed attempt to make Nigel Farage, the UK Independence Party and the millions of people who share his viewpoint seem extremist, weird and dangerous.

All of these armchair pundits know what Nigel Farage meant when he said he admired the direct effectiveness of Vladimir Putin’s assertive foreign policy as compared to the dithering and retrenchment which have all too often characterised the governments of David Cameron and Barack Obama. But why let a non-story go to waste when words can be twisted and mischaracterised to falsely make their speaker sound like the CEO of the Vladimir Putin Fan Club?

Of course, all of this kerfuffle could have been avoided if Nigel Farage had chosen his words more carefully. Had Farage prefaced his words with a lengthy (but surely unnecessary) denunciation of Russia’s behaviour and Putin’s morals, he might have escaped censure by the self-appointed moral arbiters of British political debate. That’s exactly what they want to happen, and it is why they are now so furious with the idiosyncratic UKIP leader, resolved once more to try to drive him out of British politics.

In the heavily thought-policed world of Nigel Farage’s critics, no opportunity to say The Correct Thing should ever remain unseized. If you want to make a point about the effectiveness of Russia’s foreign policy then that’s okay, but by God you had better utter the cross-party approved talking points before you do so. Only once all of your political pronouncements become entangled in endless disclaimers and footnotes grounding them in established political correctness will these meddling people be satisfied.

Tim Stanley puts it well:

Westminster is going to continue hitting its head against the brick wall of public antipathy towards politics-as-usual. The more that Farage acts up, the more different he seems, the more the establishment will hate him, the more the voters will like him.

And there, right there, is the popularity of Nigel Farage. Political correctness and towing the establishment party line? He will have none of it, thank you very much. Whether you like his political stances or not, he is the only leader of a major political party in Britain who remains willing and able to speak honestly and passionately as though he isn’t reading from a focus group-approved script.

How richly will the voters reward him in May’s elections for daring to talk like a normal human being?

 

The next Leader’s debate on the European Union takes place tonight (Wednesday 2nd April) at 1900 BST, and will be shown on BBC Two.

Britain’s Future In Europe – Reviewing the LBC Debate

Samuel Hooper4 Comments
Image from BBC
The LBC debate on Europe – Image from BBC

 

Finally, the British voters got what they had always wanted – a real debate between politicians on the merits and disadvantages of Britain’s continued EU membership. The political elite and main party leaders may have snubbed the debate and thumbed their noses at the concerns and sentiments of the people, but the discussion went ahead nonetheless, thus proving that important and thorny issues will be debated and tackled in Britain, even when it does not dovetail conveniently with the news strategies of the main political parties.

This blog offered a running, real-time commentary on the debate as it took place, on Twitter.

Nick Clegg, having been nominated to begin the debate, started with the risible and misleading suggestion so beloved of Europhiles that Britain’s trade with Europe and membership of the European Union are essentially one and the same thing – that to leave the political organisation that is the EU would be to build a wall and sever all trade ties with our continental European trading partners. Of course, in reality this is simply not the case, and Nigel Farage took the earliest opportunity to swat down this false argument.

Farage continued his strong start by cunningly reversing the question and asking if Britain were currently outside the EU, and given what we all now know about the costs and flaws and drawbacks of EU membership, whether the British electorate would likely vote to join. This simple shifting of the lens on the debate is clever, and moves focus away from distracting side-issues about the mechanics of secession, looking instead specifically at the merits.

The debate then moved on to whether a referendum on British membership of the EU is desirable at all. Here, Farage did a superb job of calling out the main political party leaders for repeatedly promising referenda in the run-up to elections and then back-peddling or stalling when the time came to deliver on the promises.

Here, Nick Clegg was firmly on the defensive, continually resorting to the official line that he might deign to grant the British people a say on future EU membership, but only in the event of some future treaty change. The justification for this particular stance, at one time used by all of the major political party leaders, has never been convincingly made. People in Britain are unhappy with the EU as it is now, not with how it might be after some as-yet unknown treaty modification. So why can the debate and the referendum not take place on Britain’s current status quo relationship with the EU? As this blog observed at the time, if you catch someone stealing from you, you don’t wait until the next theft before alerting the police, you would do so immediately. And so if Britain’s EU membership has been acting against our national interests, why should the British people have to wait until the next harm is caused to the country before seeking redress?

Of course, the topic of immigration was raised, thus exposing the major chink in UKIP’s armour – the perception that the party and its supporters are hostile to immigrants per se. The fact that the question was asked by an audience member of the ‘swivel-eyed lunatic’ type appearance and then heartily embraced by Farage did not help matters. A party that aims to abhor regulation and restrictions on business and the market really needs to ask itself if continued opposition to immigration is a sound policy in 21st century Britain.

Aside from this inevitable rocky point, Farage remained combative and humorous throughout, while Clegg – despite deploying his usual tricks of staring into the camera and repeating the names of audience members as many times as possible – seemed defensive and on the back foot. There was even time for an awkward Marco Rubio-style on-camera gulp of water from the Deputy Prime Minister.

Farage landed yet another blow on Clegg when he reminded viewers of the apocalyptic doomsday scenarios laid out by pro-Europeans in the 1990s, claiming that Britain’s economy would be dealt a mortal blow if we failed to sign up for the single European currency. “Thank God we didn’t listen,” thundered Farage, to loud applause.

This left Nick Clegg scrabbling around for any remaining mud to sling at Nigel Farage and the Eurosceptic movement. In the end, he resorted to a beloved bogeyman of British social discourse, paedophilia. Nick Clegg, in his desperation to score a final point against Nigel Farage, actually appeared to suggest that British secession from the EU would eradicate Britain’s ability to extradite and prosecute paedophiles – a ludicrous argument, and basically a reassertion of the false argument that Britain would leave the EU without drawing up replacement political, trading and justice treaties with the remaining member states.

And on that damp squib of a counter-argument, save only the closing statements, the debate was over. A solid victory for Nigel Farage, one might have thought, until one witnessed the commentary on television and the internet.

Several commentators rightly pointed out that the media showed several worrying signs of institutional bias. In the buildup to the televised debate, ably anchored by Kay Burley on Sky News, at one point a panel member – a visiting university student from America – was asked if she was ‘worried’ or ‘alarmed’ by the fact that Britain was debating the topic as she landed in the country. Never mind the fact that the poor girl clearly knew next to nothing about what the EU is or how it works, the question was so leading as to be risible. Rather than painting the in/out decision in more clinical terms and asking for a comment, it was suggested to the American student that the very idea of Britain leaving the European Union is alarming and scary. Naturally, the student – on live television – agreed with the questioner that it was indeed a scary prospect. So much for objective coverage.

Peter Oborne, writing in The Telegraph, also found significant institutional fault in the way that the mainstream media handled the coverage and the issue of Britain’s EU membership in general. Oborne saw a deliberate attempt to spin the results of the debate as a victory for Nick Clegg and the pro-European side, until the overwhelming results of the post-debate poll forced them to amend their stories:

Last night’s debate between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg was a very good example of this phenomenon. The lobby wanted a Clegg win and … collectively called victory for Clegg the moment that the debate was over.

It was only when the YouGov poll came through showing that Farage had won the debate hands-down with the public that lobby journalists were forced into an abrupt U-turn.

I am not going to embarrass reporters by naming names. However, it is fair to hold both Sky and the BBC to account.

Oborne concludes that the UKIP and Eurosceptic-leaning side not only have to win their argument in the court of public opinion, but also overcome a second opponent in the British press:

Farage is leading a political insurgency. Last night was a reminder that Ukip’s opponents are not just the other political parties, but also the mainstream British media.

The Spectator also picked up on the media’s U-turn upon realising that their preferred narrative was falling apart in the face of the YouGov poll:

Nick Clegg had been given the night off babysitting; but, after the poll verdict on tonight’s EU debate with Nigel Farage, he may wish he’d stayed at home with the kids. As the dust settled, the Deputy Prime Minister was bundled into a car and fled the field of battle. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage headed for a victory lap at the Reform Club, where his party donors had been watching.

Backstage, Westminster’s hack-pack was necking cheap vino and Pret sandwiches after carrying out a spectacular volte face. Initially ‘the spin room’ had called the duel for Clegg, on both style and substance. But, as news of the Sun/YouGov poll filtered through to the scribblers, headlines were rewritten and awkward tweets deleted. Soon, only the BBC was left flying the Clegg flag, with the help of Danny Alexander and Tim Farron.

And even now, in the cold light of a new day, the general consensus from the headlines appears to be that that it was an honours-even draw, and that there were ‘no knock-out blows’:

The question of the hour, should Britain stay in the European Union? But the question now being asked? Who won, Nick or Nigel?

Well, it might be disappointing but both men certainly remain standing after tonight’s event. Neither was knocked to the ground and both sides will be pleased with how their leaders performed.

Given the testy nature of the debate and the fact that Nick Clegg was on the back foot for nearly the entire duration, one wonders what would have had to happen – short of either man accidentally lighting his podium on fire – for the news media to declare an actual victory for either side.

And this typifies a problem that is becoming endemic in the news media, not only in Britain but also in the United States. All too often, there is such a tremendous pressure to appear nonbiased and objective that news organisations are terrified to report on anything of a partisan nature without giving equal balance to both arguments. The compulsion to treat both sides of an argument as equally valid and legitimate – even when one is clearly correct and the other one wrong – is paralysing the ability of many news outlets to correctly report the news, even when there is no deliberate attempt to give favourable editorial treatment to a particular side.

The only news outlet with a convincing explanation (i.e. one not based on bipartisan spinelessness) for why both UKIP and the Liberal Democrats seem happy with last night’s debate is The Spectator:

Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage may have looks straight into the same camera and appeared to be addressing the same audience, but they were aiming for different listeners. That’s why the Lib Dems were happy with the 36 per cent that they polled last night. It demonstrates to them that there is some kind of constituency that likes to hear a politician being honest that he likes Europe and that he is pessimistic about Britain’s chances outside the EU.

Last night’s result also demonstrates that even if you appear a bit ratty and sweaty at times, as Nigel Farage did to those who are not instinctively his supporters, you can still win the debate, because there is a bigger constituency of voters who do agree with what you are saying, even if you’re not as polished as Nick Clegg. Thus the first of the two debates went very well for both parties: both were shoring up their own bases and motivating them to vote in elections with typically very low turnout. The real mission for these party leaders is to get their voters to go to the polling booths, not bother about people who haven’t made up their minds.

This ‘one debate, two audiences’ explanation makes a good deal of sense.

Of course, there is one further debate to take place, this one hosted by the BBC on Wednesday 2 April. Again, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition have declined to participate. And once again, despite their resistance and the timidity of much of the British press, the public will continue to debate the issues in their absence.

Comment Is Free, But Death Could Soon Get Pricey

Samuel HooperLeave a comment
One day, Timmy, all of this will be seized by the government to stop you from gaining an unfair advantage in life
One day, Timmy, all of this will be seized by the government to stop you from gaining an unfair advantage in life

 

Never mind tinkering around the edges and tweaking the rates for inheritance tax or the level at which it takes effect – those arguments are so 2013. The real movers and shakers of the left are now questioning the right of anyone to pass on anything to their children at all, and their self-appointed spokesman, James Butler, has taken to the Comment Is Free pages of The Guardian to argue his case.

In high dudgeon, Butler points to several universally-acknowledged flaws in society, wildly extrapolates from them and reaches the conclusion that we would all be much better off if parents were actively discouraged from working hard and getting ahead for the benefit of their children. Apparently, goes this argument, the natural human instinct to provide for one’s offspring should be forcibly curtailed by government in order to ensure a strictly level playing field for everyone – and what is more, the government should have the right to enforce this usurpation of property rights:

Why do we permit this? The transfer of wealth between generations is an injustice: it is a reward for no work, and a form of access to privileges that are otherwise beyond reach.

The ‘we’ that are permitting this is never fully identified by Butler, but appears to consist of himself, his friends and others of a similarly cataclysmically communist bent. Butler clearly does not start from the basis that the people determine the powers that government may wield, instead approaching the issue from the basis that government should decide which powers and rights to grant the people. And to Butler’s mind, free agency and the ability to do what you like with your own assets is a liberty too far:

Far from a Keynesian “euthanasia of the rentier”, we are seeing the triumph of a rentier economy: in such conditions, rather than further accumulation by the sons and daughters of the wealthy, we should instead demand an end to inherited wealth entirely.

An end to inherited wealth entirely. Quite how such a policy would ever be implemented remains conveniently unmentioned by Butler, but would clearly happen only over the dead bodies of the thousands and millions of people who believe in the right to pass on to their children that which they have built or preserved during their lifetimes, to do with as they see fit.

None of this is to say that Butler does not hit on some of society’s ills; indeed, he is quite right to point out the fact that too many people in Britain are born with almost impossible odds of achieving success in life, whilst for children of privilege, failure is next to impossible. He detail many of the ways in which this problem perpetuates itself in a way that is impossible to refute:

Despite nominal efforts to curb this kind of [tax] minimisation, there remains a booming market in financial advice tailored to avoidance. The knock-on effects of this minimisation are huge: it permits further concentration of wealth in the hands of those who already possess it, rewarding those cunning enough to avoid taxation, and cushioning their children with an influx of unearned wealth. There are obvious uses to which this can be put: paying off student loans early, thus avoiding interest, investing in buy-to-let property, or high-return financial products. It permits the children of the middle classes to sustain themselves through unpaid internships or unfunded study into secure middle-class careers, while locking these off from those without such resources.

The diagnosis is spot-on, but the prescription that follows is barking mad. And as is all too often the case with solutions from the left, Butler seeks a remedy by tearing down the successful or privileged rather than building up the weak or disadvantaged. He legitimately seems to believe that Britain’s societal ills can be cured if the counter is reset to zero as each generation expires, with all of the winnings confiscated by the government and scooped into a big pot for the communal good.

Neither does it occur to Butler or other death tax proponents that the human brain and spirit – if given an adequate starting point via a good quality education, a safe upbringing and ambitious goals – is capable of outmatching and overtaking others born with far more advantages but much less motivation or natural ability.

So here is a different prescription: what if Butler and others of his persuasion placed more trust in human ability properly nurtured, and less reliance on the government to be the final arbiter of who gets to keep what when the music stops at life’s end?

Not all rich and wealthy people achieved their favourable position in life through the fruits of their own talent and labour – this is abundantly and indisputably clear. But equally, not all poor or less successful people arrived at their less favourable position because of a lack of resources and opportunities.

So why do people like James Butler and his inheritance tax-supporting friends on the left continue to clamour for a one-size-fits-all remedy to a complex problem?