Michael White's Blog, page 39
August 5, 2014
First world war's bloodlines still colour Europe, Middle East and Africa today
Watching and reading about Monday's centennial commemorations, as movingly as Jon Henley describes them from Mons, it is still hard not to conclude that collectively we remain as short sighted, naïve even, as the thousands in cities across Europe who poured into the streets to cheer the outbreak of war in 1914. It would all be over by Christmas, wouldn't it? They looked to Germany's lightning wars of 1866 and 1870, when they should have been studying the industrial trench warfare of the American civil war.
Nothing illustrates the point more simply than the running order of Monday's TV news bulletins or Tuesday's front pages. The top-of-the-bulletin coverage has been full of well meaning piety about lessons learned, enemies reconciled, old wounds that bled Europe, now bound up. But when we get past 4 August 1914 the anniversary industry's latest and most terrible date we find the world not so different as we like to think.
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July 21, 2014
Twenty years of Tony Blair: totting up the balance sheet | Michael White
Is it only 20 years ago that Tony Blair, that fresh-faced boy and his wife, Cherie, stood before the cameras as the new face of the Labour party? It is, but the early 90s seems far longer away in so many ways, and so does globetrotting, wheeler-dealing Blair. Who he is now and who the rest of us are makes it harder to evaluate his substantial record in office.
That Blair and Gordon Brown, a partnership whether they liked it or (sometimes) didn't, changed a great deal in modern Britain, much of it for the better, can hardly be denied. Yet this is routinely denied on both right and left for reasons that do not help our understanding.
Continue reading...July 16, 2014
A grey, boring Tory reshuffle? Not quite all it seems | Michael White
David Cameron's government reshuffle is getting such a hostile press in much of Fleet Street today that there must be more to be said for it than looked apparent at the halfway stage yesterday. And so there is. Disenchanted voters in 2010 wanted a clear-out of the "old politics". One way or another, they've certainly got an experiment on their hands now. Will they be grateful on polling day in 10 months' time?
Continue reading...July 15, 2014
David Cameron culls the 'dead, white males' but you can't fake experience
Ken Clarke has just popped up on Radio 4's flagship Today programme to put a characteristically cheerful and loyal gloss on David Cameron's cabinet reshuffle in which the ex-future Tory leader finally stepped down after a ministerial career spanning a remarkable 42 years. "We'll have you back," said Today's Justin Webb. I bet they will.
Continue reading...July 10, 2014
Politics Weekly podcast: public inquiries, strikes and liberalism
July 7, 2014
Geoffrey Dickens: a clown whose campaign is finally taken seriously
Former Tory MP, Geoffrey Dickens, would have been tickled pink (he used that kind of language) to discover that, nearly 20 years after his premature death at the age of 63, his name is again on newspaper front pages, his failed campaign to expose a paedophile ring in high places, being taken seriously at last. He was not averse to publicity.
Dickens, a plump man with a red face and booming voice, who represented Huddersfield West and later Littleborough and Saddleworth from 1979 to 1995, always took himself more seriously than many colleagues did in Margaret Thatcher's heyday.
Continue reading...June 27, 2014
Politics Weekly podcast: Coulson, Cameron and Juncker
June 25, 2014
Why it's OK to feel sorry for Andy Coulson
Can we feel sorry for Andy Coulson as the former News of the World and No 10 man awaits sentencing at the Old Bailey after his conviction for conspiracy to hack phones? Despite everything, including the Sun's triumphant "Great day for the redtops" headline, I think we can, though it is not compulsory.
Continue reading...June 24, 2014
The Polish tapes: who and why is the most important question
The jolly row over what Polish politicians are saying about David Cameron reminds me of a well-known conceit among journalists, who are supposed to listen to politicians while thinking "why is this bastard lying to me?" The less self-aware rarely wonder if the politician may be thinking the same thing (he/she is).
Continue reading...June 23, 2014
Europe is shrinking and Juncker is a symbol of its quiet-life parochialism | Michael White
I am not a fan of David Cameron's European policy. If the EU question derails his premiership, as it did those of John Major, Margaret Thatcher and along with the once mighty miners Ted Heath, it will serve him right. Instead of confronting and facing down his unappeasable Eurosceptic ultras, he has pandered to them. Indeed he fatally did so with a silly promise that helped him win the Tory leadership in 2005.
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