Monday 5 April 2010

A Media Election, Not A General Election

Peter Hitchens writes:

Some readers will remember a past election (was it 1997? I think so) when the BBC fanned into an enormous blaze the uninteresting and unsurprising information that lots of Tory candidates weren't wild about Britain's deepening absorption into the EU.

Night after night, obscure MPs, of whom nobody had heard before, or would ever hear of again, were probed by BBC teams investigating their election leaflets, and finding insufficient enthusiasm for the European project. The idea was that the Tories were 'split' on this subject. Several anti-Tory newspapers joined in, there not being much else to talk about. But then in modern elections the whole idea is that there isn't much to talk about.

Then and since I've been convinced that whoever thought of this 'Tory split' angle was basing it on the undoubted splits that used to exist in Labour, on unilateral nuclear disarmament, or union laws or whatever it might be.

A similar impulse lay somewhere behind the astonishing claim, made in the final Labour election broadcast of 1997 election, that the Tories planned to abolish the old age pension. This wasn't true, but it was designed to be a kind of mirror image of the 'Labour's Tax Bombshell' Tory campaign posters of 1992, which was broadly true.

This broadcast, a masterpiece of totalitarian smear in which the Tories were mercilessly pilloried with the use of speeded up film and satirical playing of 'Land of Hope and Glory' chilled my bones when I saw it. It was intended to engender personal hate against those portrayed. I thought (and my fears were borne out) that a party which came to office with such methods was one that was to be feared in government.

I've also often thought that Labour's willingness to go to war in Iraq and the Balkans (or the Balklands, as I sometimes hear people call this region) has something to do with their furious envy of Margaret Thatcher's undeserved Falklands triumph of 1982, which they believe (with some justice) saved her electoral bacon in 1983.

The BBC, for much of this period, was wholly dedicated to the anti-Tory cause. It regarded the Thatcher Tories as despicable and self-evidently bad, and developed an adversarial relationship with the government which made viewing quite interesting, if infuriating for non-leftists. One of the reasons why 'Newsnight', once a compulsory watch, is now so hog-whimperingly dull is that the BBC has never been able to develop an equally adversarial relationship with New Labour, and will have (see below) the same problem if the Cameroons get in. That is because almost everyone in the BBC shares the basic assumptions of Blairites and Cameroons alike.

Now, for reasons explored in my book 'The Cameron Delusion' (an updated version of 'The Broken Compass'), the BBC and much of the print media are as devoted to the Cameron Tories as they once were to New Labour. And this has just been demonstrated in an interesting way, which shows us how the election is likely to continue unless unexpected events subvert it.

During last week's Chancellors debate, the Tory George Osborne did fairly badly. He wasn't a disaster, but he didn't need to be. He was as usual unconvincing and squeaky. Worse, he was plainly in trouble over his scheme to pay for a national insurance cut with 'efficiency savings', a claim which any serious politician, civil servant, economist and even political journalist knows to be laughable piffle. There are no such savings. They do not exist. Alistair Darling pointed this out, but that could be discounted because it was in the way of business. The problem for Mr Osborne was that Vince Cable, who won the debate with ease, strongly supported the Chancellor on this.

What followed was a rescue operation by Tory HQ. Every businessman they could get their hands on was persuaded to sign a letter claiming that Labour's planned NI changes would kill the recovery. What, big businessmen support the Tory Party? Companies want to pay less tax? This was news equivalent to the revelation that the Atlantic Ocean is rather wet.

So on to the front page, and the top of every bulletin, it duly went. It entirely swamped the rather different point, plainly made in the debate, that the Tories have no idea how they propose to pay for the very expensive policy on which their whole campaign now depends. Our non-vigilant political press, tickle-minded as ever, have 'moved on', being wholly uninterested in politics and even less versed in economics than I am.

So the Tories are not being asked about it any more. BBC reporters, whose job it isn't to give umpire's decisions on such controversies, are proclaiming a Tory victory on this subject. And every other pundit is saying it was a terrific success for George Osborne, and a blow for Labour.

Well, maybe it was. I've yet to see any connection between this event and the polls (which in many cases show Labour dropping and the Tories either dropping too or staying the same, leading to a bigger 'Tory lead' without an increase in Tory support). I put the latest shift down much more to Vince Cable's good showing.

My guess is that quite a lot of Labour and Tory voters are thinking of voting Liberal Democrat, on the basis that a Hung Parliament's the only way they'll get Vince Cable into the Treasury (which is smart thinking). That's what's cutting the Labour vote at the moment, the Tory vote already being close to its irreducible minimum anyway.

People shouldn't underestimate the importance of Mr Cable in this election. A lot of voters like the look of him, both as a person and as a potential Chancellor, regardless of party, and they can see that an outright victory by the Tories (or Labour) would keep him out of office. Whereas a hung Parliament would make it quite possible that he would be part of a coalition. And there will be tactical voting aimed at achieving this, I would guess, which will hurt both big parties in the places where it is feasible.

Then came another problem for the Tories, one which would once have plunged them into a fiery furnace of controversy and interrogation. This problem is called Chris Grayling. Mr Grayling, the pleasant but somehow unimpressive Shadow Home Secretary, told a think tank gathering last week that he believed Christians who run bed and breakfasts should have 'the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home'. He was commenting on controversy about a Christian couple who declined to accommodate a homosexual couple in their B&B.

I'm inclined to agree with what Mr Grayling told the think tank. The B&Bs I've stayed in have been people's homes, in which I have occupied a room, on much closer terms with the owners than I would ever be in a hotel. The owners would seem to me be entitled to take a rather more personal view of the behaviour of their guests than a hotel manager would.

There are still people, shocking though it may be to the staff of the BBC, who think that extramarital sex of all kinds is wrong. But that's by the way in this discussion. The important thing is that the law of this country, or rather the law of the EU, says different. The Sexual Orientation Regulations clearly forbid B&B owners to decline to accept homosexual couples as their guests. And, here's the clincher, the Tory Parliamentary Party voted for this law. And Mr Grayling was one of those who did.

What's more, he's now been compelled to grovel in public to the Pink Lobby, and has issued the following statement: 'Any suggestion that I am against gay rights is wholly wrong - it is a matter of record that I voted for civil partnerships. I also voted in favour of the legislation that prohibited bed and breakfast owners from discriminating against gay people. However, this is a difficult area and on Wednesday I made comments which reflected my view that we must be sensitive to the genuinely held principles of faith groups in this country. But the law is now clear on this issue, I am happy with it and would not wish to see it changed.'

The problem with this statement is that his attempt to claim the need for 'sensitivity' as his get-out for his taped remarks doesn't work. He now says that such sensitivity should be against the law. He knew that when he made his remarks, so what was he playing at?

It may be difficult, but as far as Mr Grayling is concerned, the law is clear. And he personally voted for the laws which banned such sensitivity. As a result, I can say with certainty that I have no idea what Mr Grayling actually believes about this subject. But I do know - with equal certainty - what he has done and will do about it. That is to say, he will act according to principles of 'Equality and Diversity', alias Political Correctness. And anyone who thinks that he, and the rest of the Tory Party, have a secret plan to escape from PC if they get into office is due for a big disappointment. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't, as these are EU rules (Equal Treatment Framework Directive, approved by Council of Ministers 2000 AD) and we are bound to impose them unless we leave, which of course the Tories won't do.

Now, this story is actually very difficult for the Tories and Mr Grayling, since it goes to the heart of what they are now about, as opposed to what they like to pretend to be to their conservative supporters. It also gives the left an opportunity to indulge their fantasy about how the Tories are deep down the same old Thatcherites as before. This is another version of the joint fantasy of stupid leftists and stupid Tories that Anthony Blair was 'right wing'. This folly was invincible precisely because it was idiotic, and those who believed it were so helplessly gullible that they weren't open to facts or reason.

Tory traditional voters would like Mr Grayling to stick to his guns (he won't, of course). Quite possibly, Mr Cameron hopes that some Tory voters will think Mr Grayling's words betoken a 'secret agenda' of real conservatism, the fantasy that keeps so many of them from deserting.

Stonewall and the rest of the sexual liberation lobby want Mr Grayling a) to abase himself in a permanent state of self-criticism lasting for the rest of the campaign, and b) be fired from the Shadow Cabinet after he has been sufficiently pelted with slime.

In any of the last four elections, this incident would have assumed huge proportions, especially on the BBC. But it hasn't. It has run in the left-wing press, and has been mentioned by the BBC. But it has not got above about 10,000 feet, and shows little sign (so far) of becoming an officially-sanctioned BBC controversy (unlike the non-controversy of business support for cutting NI, with which they dealt obsessively last week).

If you are really interested in politics, I advise you to watch out for more of this sort of thing.

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