And another thing…

JOHN Kampfner’s decision to support the LibDems should come as no surprise to anyone.

I recall a truly bizarre feature in the New Statesman in the few weeks running up to the 2005 election in which readers were invited to vote tactically against Labour MPs. That’s right – against! He was one of the delicate flowers, I assume, who think large Labour majorities are just too, too fwightening, and so wanted to curb our power with an injection of opposition politicians.

(Intriguingly, almost all of the Labour MPs so targeted were on the so-called “Blairite” wing of the party – go figure!)

As Neil Kinnock rightly points out today in a letter to The Guardian, Thatcher got her best result when the SDP/Liberal vote was at its highest.

Why hasn’t Kampfner sussed the fact that any swing away from Labour and towards the Liberals can only benefit the Tories?

Or maybe he has.

UNLESS you’re a climate scientist with a record of publishing learned academic papers, you are not qualified to have an opinion on the subject. So says Mehdi Hassan in the New Statesman this week.

He’s writing about the rather entertaining row that has erupted between The Spectator and environmental journalist George “Yay for the recession!” Monbiot over the latter’s refusal to debate the science of climate change with the magazine’s latest hero, Ian Plimer.

In response to new Spectator editor Fraser Nelson’s mention of “the US Senate list of 700 scientists who dissent over man-made global warming”, Hassan writes:

they’re simply wrong, in a tiny minority and not even qualified to proffer an opinion on the subject: the vast majority of them are not climate scientists, nor have they published in fields relevant to climate science (my emphasis).

So the question arises: is Mehdi Hassan a pubished climate change scientist? If not (and I suspect he isn’t, but if I’m wrong I apologise) then why is he offering an opinion on man-made climate change, one way or the other?

For the record, I’m not a published climate change scientist (so I hope Mr Hassan will forgive my expressing an opinion), but am inclined to accept the views of the overhelming majority of the international scientific community and accept that climate change is man-made and can therefore be ameliorated through policy.

What really gets on my nerves, though, is how this debate has been polarised along political dividing lines: with very few exceptions, those on the left believe in the Al Gore analysis and are utterly dismissive of those who disagree with it, contemptuously and arrogantly dismissing them as “climate change deniers”. This is an offensive and stupid term, seeking to associate even those with genuine doubts about the scientific consensus with neo-Nazi holocaust deniers.

Similarly, if you’re of a right-wing bent, you’re more than likely to dismiss the “man-made” factor of climate change and categorise all environmental campaigners as unreformed Marxists using the issue as a Trojan horse with which to destroy capitalism.

The row between Monbiot and Nelson/Plimer is infantile. A lot of people would be interested, I think, in watching an informed and civilised debate between the two camps, if they can only bring themselves to get off their high horses and start showing a bit of tolerance and respect for the other side.

Sh*t, I’m starting to sound like a LibDem…

IT’S AT times like this that I’m glad I cancelled my New Statesman subscription.

James Macintyre just posted a piece entitled “The hypocrisy of Eric Joyce”, which basically claims that if you supported the invasion of Iraq (which both Eric and I did), you therefore have no right to suggest that the public’s patience might be running out with the argument that British efforts in Afghanistan are aimed at preventing terrorism in Britain.

And Macintyre (who isn’t nearly as funny as his brother Michael, by the way) resurrects that old, dishonest, craven and blindingly stupid argument that the war in Iraq “actually brought Islamist terror to Britain’s streets for the first time.” In Macintyre’s mind, Islamist terrorism never existed before 7/7/05, despite the oft-repeated mantra that we now live in a globalised world, and despite the fact that Islamists have been murdering their political and religious opponents in cold blood and in great numbers for decades. But until 2005, not in Britain, so that’s okay.

Isn’t it wonderful how some on the Left try to pin the blame for terrorism on the British government, and not on the murdering psychopaths who actually set off the explosives on London’s transport system?

As it happens, I don’t agree with Eric’s reasons for resigning; the war in Afghanistan is sadly necessary and the public’s impatience with the mission’s progress can have no bearing on the rights or wrongs of our presence there.

But hypocrite he is not.

SUZANNE Moore is having a bit of a strop, it seems.

The former New Statesman columnist and contributing editor used the pages of the Mail on Sunday to denounce the decision to offer Alastair Campbell the chance to guest edit the weekly magazine (not that I’m averse to using the MoS to get a point across now and again). Alastair, as you might expect, filled with pages with his favourite stuff: football (Sir Alex Ferguson), Tony Blair (talking about — shock! horror! — God) and the Labour Party (in support of).

This was all too much for Suzanne, who clearly prefers it when magazines of the Left spend all their time criticising the Labour Party.

I actually bought the Alastair Campbell issue and, apart from the football stuff, found it a decent read for the first time in years. My relationship wit the NS has been something of an on/off affair. I first started buying it on a semi-regular basis in the 1980s, but quickly tired of its pro-Charter 88 nonsense (“Hey, come all you masses of unemployed and fight for the right to have the number of elected representatives in the legislature exactly proportional to the number of votes cast. Rad!”).

Then, in the few years running up to the 1997 election, I became a proper subscriber. It was a great read in those days, speculating on what a new Labour government (its editorial policy forbade it to capitalise “new” in that context) might do or not do. It was generally supportive and positive about Tony and the party, and my favourite column (long since ditched) was the Diary of Lynton Charles MP, a fictional character trying to make his way in the parliamentary party under the tutelage of Peter Mandelson. Brilliant.

Then, once we were in government, and certainly after the 2001 election, it reverted to type, and went back down the oppositionalist road. You could almost hear the editorial sighs of relief. Supporting any government is just so establishment, don’t you find?

I finally got round to canceling my subscription a couple of years ago. But if Alastair decided this was a permanent gig, I’d certainly consider renewing it.

Me with that bloke who used to work on The Mirror

THE LATEST developments in the bare knuckle fight between Harry’s Place and academic Jenna Delich continues, with the latest twist focusing on 9/11 “conspiracies”.

Conspiracy theories and the strange individuals who waste their time reading about them can be easily dispensed with. What is more dangerous are those who seek to use their status, position and skills to justify or excuse acts of terrorism.

A few years back I was greatly offended by an article in The New Statesman by John Pilger. No surprise there, you might say – isn’t everyone? Pilger had written a piece about 9/11 and had come out with all the usual nonsense about how America wasn’t really the victim. What incensed me was his use of the word “terrorists” to describe Muhammad Atta and his fellow murderers. Let me make this clear: Pilger inserted inverted commas round the word “terrorist” within his article.

Now, my understanding of journalistic rules is that there are two reasons for using double inverted commas: when quoting someone, and to indicate irony. Pilger was not quoting anyone, so he was using “terrorist” as an ironic description of the… er, terrorists.

The implication Pilger intended was that Atta and his henchmen were unfairly labelled as terrorists by the mainstream media, but that he wasn’t going to make the same mistake, oh no. After all, anyone who hated the United States that much can’t be all bad, surely?

I found myself writing a letter of complaint, which was published and, surprisingly, responded to by Pilger himself. Can’t remember now what names he called me; they probably weren’t any worse than some of the things left as comments on this blog.

We should be very careful indeed of those in the mainstream media using language that seeks, even in a subtle way, to excuse or justify acts of random murder. Explain, yes; excuse, never.

THE NEW Statesman’s website is carrying an article giving my initial reaction to, and thoughts on, Glasgow East, for anyone who’s interested.