Michael White's Blog, page 3
August 18, 2016
Race relations in 2016: much to deplore but plenty to applaud
No one should be complacent about racism but the story is rarely as straightforward as some commentators routinely assert
In my city neighbourhood this summer a man on the run from police custody hit a black woman in the face. Understandably, she reported it as a racial attack. Except it probably wasn’t. The runaway also hit a boy when his mother opened the door and tried to spray another woman’s hair red at a bus stop. He had mental health problems.
Not much harm done in this instance. But it’s one reason why I don’t often write about race relations in modern Britain, though I first did so 50 years ago when many aspects of them were pretty grim.
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August 17, 2016
William Smethurst obituary
Despite being a soft-spoken Lancastrian of mild-mannered appearance, the writer and producer William Smethurst, who has died aged 71, was known to his detractors in radio and television as “Butcher Bill”. But the ruthless skills combined with mischievous flair that he displayed as editor of The Archers for eight years from 1978 were widely credited with saving Radio 4’s flagging rural soap opera and making it the cult show it later became. Smethurst was the man who licensed writers to scandalise sleepy Ambridge and once persuaded Princess Margaret to make a guest appearance.
He was less successful when Central TV lured him from BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham to pull off the same trick with Crossroads, its Midlands motel saga, which had run out of steam. Smethurst ditched Tony Hatch’s theme tune, killed off characters (much as he had Dan and Doris Archer), and made the plots (and scenery) more credible and the cast much more glamorous, with the help of the motel swimming pool he installed. Some critics preferred its previous awfulness and the show folded in 1988.
Continue reading...Acting prime minister is still a long way from the top, Boris Johnson | Michael White
The New York-born scholar Boris Johnson, currently billed as “acting prime minister” while Theresa May walks in the Swiss mountains, will know the only famous remark attributed to John Nance Garner. The sharp-tongued Texan, who had the misfortune to be Franklin D Roosevelt’s vice-president during the great man’s first two terms, once observed that the number two job wasn’t worth “a bucket of warm spit”.
Sometimes it’s quoted as a pitcher’s worth, sometimes a quart, occasionally the liquid in question is warm piss. But everyone gets Garner’s drift: he regretted taking the job. Roosevelt’s next veep, Henry Wallace, got dropped for being leftwing. The one after that lucked out. Unassuming Harry Truman succeeded to the Oval Office when the ailing president died three weeks before Hitler in April 1945. In August he got to drop the bomb.
Related: 'Avoid diplomacy': five guidelines to help Boris Johnson run the country
Continue reading...August 16, 2016
How to tell a shining knight of a lawyer from an ambulance chaser?
The question takes us straight to this week’s reported news that Phil Shiner’s Public Interest Lawyers is having to close
Friends who have devoted selfless hours to helping asylum seekers for decades get upset when someone suggests that many such people game the system, knowing that they will be rejected as the economic migrants they really are. But a veteran civil liberties lawyer I also know quickly changed her tune when she started examining appeals in detail. There is a lot of abuse, she concluded.
Tricky, isn’t it? People fight for all sorts of rights and humane procedures, only to see them cynically abused by false claimants, wicked people smugglers and nimble-footed solicitors.
Continue reading...August 15, 2016
Suspend the rightwing Tory MP Philip Davies? No way, he'd love it
Condemnation is fine, but understanding where his idiotic remarks about women came from is also important
Should the rightwing MP Philip Davies be suspended from the Conservative party for making idiotic remarks about women at a knuckle-draggers conference in London? Some say so, but I’m not convinced he should.
The self-styled “libertarian” backwoodsman from Shipley didn’t break the law and routinely makes comments and speeches that are offensive or stupid. Rarely is a Daily Mail outrage story not rendered slightly more ridiculous by the presence of a rent-a-quote from Phil. He’s one of those MPs – they exist in all parties – whose quoted support reliably undermines a case.
Continue reading...August 12, 2016
Voter fraud is a sensitive issue that needs addressing | Michael White
There’s a risk in tackling such problems more directly, but not doing so only makes matters worse in the long run
I’ve never been a great fan of Eric Pickles, briefly an underwhelming, budget-cutting leader of Bradford city council, later an underwhelming local government secretary whose chief contribution to “localism” was to localise the budget cuts and still tell town halls what to do. I just didn’t trust him.
But he has a point in saying the government at every level should take more seriously the sensitive issue of voter fraud, not least by requiring identity checks at polling stations.
Continue reading...August 11, 2016
Theresa May won't call a snap election – voters don't want one
The temptation is obvious, but the EU referendum was enough excitement for most and there would be hurdles to clear
Will Theresa May try to call an early general election? With Labour in such obvious disarray and her own Commons majority consisting of just 12 possibly disloyal MPs, the temptation must be obvious. It’s an open goal, as Tim Montgomerie puts it in the Times(£). He’s not the only one.
My hunch is that the new prime minister will resist that temptation and be right to do so. Contrary to what political activists believe (at least they do for a while), most voters don’t want to be dragged to the polls more than is strictly necessary. They elect other people to worry for them, and the 23 June referendum was quite enough excitement for most.
Continue reading...August 10, 2016
Tom Watson is a piggy in several middles | Michael White
Deputy leader’s Trotsky entryist comments have landed him in fresh trouble but the party should not – and will not – split
It’s hard to read Decca Aitkenhead’s Guardian interview with an emollient Tom Watson and not feel sorry for Labour’s deputy leader as he struggles to pick his way through the debris produced by near catastrophic errors – made by other people – without making things worse.
In the present fevered climate of anger and mutual mistrust, even such a bland assertion is likely to generate snorts of derision from one side or both. Jeremy Corbyn is a “give peace a chance” man, but like many such self-styled idealists his failure to provide effective leadership piles up the rubble and risk for those around him.
Continue reading...August 9, 2016
Theresa May should stick to her guns on executive pay and low pay alike
Another pay rise for top execs will leave voters angry – but addressing low pay is important too
Twenty four hours after the Guardian and some other newspapers, including the money class’s own Financial Times, put the 10% pay rise for FTSE 100 chief executives on Monday’s front page, I went back to the pink ’un to check the fallout. Not much yet, except one encouraging straw in the wind. I’ll come back to that.
On this occasion the Daily Mail didn’t have much room for the High Pay Centre’s latest update. It devoted more space (yet again) to the excessive scale of gongs and goodbye handshakes being paid to David Cameron’s outgoing staff at No 10, but also to its own exposé of excessive pay, perks and long holidays of taxpayer-funded chief constables and their top teams. Roy Greenslade, tabloid editor turned professor, explains why readers love it.
Continue reading...August 6, 2016
Why has David Cameron’s honours list caused such a fuss?
The British press have united in criticising the outgoing prime minister’s list of decorations. It’s hardly the first list of its kind – but public tolerance of such rewards has diminished over the years
Related: George Osborne and Tory donors on Cameron's honours list
Why is David Cameron in such trouble over his resignation honours list?
Related: The Daily Mail and the Guardian agree: honours system is a disgrace
Related: From Lloyd George to the lavender list: the history of honours scandals
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