Tuesday, 3 May 2022

A stroll down memory lane

Harry Lambert, a journalist from The New Statesman, published a video on Twitter yesterday of Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, in 1970 being interviewed on the BBC by a youthful David Dimbleby just after the general election that year which took place on 18 June. You can see the clip on the tweet below. There is some general amazement at the tone of the interview and Wilson's answers. It is completely different to the ones we hear today.  The clip is only a couple of minutes long but well worth watching.

As Lambert points out, Wilson actually answers questions and at one point utters the words, "I don't know" - nowadays seen as political suicide.

The former Tory MP and leadership candidate Rory Stewart, who quit politics in despair after Boris Johnson was chosen by party members, re-tweeted and pointed to Wilson's "automatic respect for constitutional precedence - the lack of slogans, his fairness towards his opponent, the mature style of the whole conversation" and admitted it made him "ashamed of what we’ve become."

I think it's worth pointing out that Wilson was not unusual in 1970. Most politicians at that time were serious men and interviewers were actually interested in getting answers, many were real statesman with gravitas. Prime ministers didn't lie with ease inside or out of the House of Commons. They were at least thought of as honourable men even if they were not.

Now three quarters of voters think the current prime minister is a habitual liar - and as we know for certain, he is.

The comments to the tweet are interesting. A lot, like Mr Stewart, lament what we have lost. Some blame the press itself with some justification. Once an interviewer starts political point scoring, asking leading questions in order to expose divisions or past mistakes, politicians become more and more defensive. 

This makes the interviewee look slippery and evasive so the questioning gets more intrusive and so on.

When did it all change?  I'm not sure but, I became interested in politics in the early 1960s as a paper boy. My round was on a typical council estate and delivering The Daily Herald (now The Sun), The Daily Sketch (now gone) along with The Mirror, The Express, The Mail, The Telegraph and The Times, I would read the headlines as I folded them ready to post through letterboxes in the morning.

They were, it seemed to me, all serious newspapers but Rupert Murdoch began the rot and they have all become either not much better than The Beano or The Dandy (which I also delivered) or ridiculously simplistic and highly partisan.

Someone else pointed out that not all politicians are the same, with Nicola Sturgeon being singled out  as a politician on top of her brief and able to answer questions without resorting to simplistic slogans, obfuscation and bluster. Perhaps it's an English thing?

Personally, I think it's part of a general lowering of standards in education. The current crop of MPs is easily the worst in my lifetime. There are 50+ MPs being investigated for various acts of wrongdoing and I wonder if anyone with integrity would actually want to serve in parliament nowadays?  I'm not sure they would.

To illustrate how bad things are, someone posted this clip of the Attorney General, the government's senior law officer struggling to answer a straightforward question:

Polling 

Elsewhere, I note the series of polls asking, in hindsight was the decision to leave the EU RIGHT or WRONG? continues to tick along. The latest came out last Friday with the number still thinking the decision was right hitting 37% - equalling the lowest level seen just once before in November last year. This is out of 208 polls. 

After a year being out of the EU and with no benefits in sight, a steady pattern is developing with a clear and regular 10-12 point gap now between the respondents. 

Also, according to the data there is now no region in the UK which thinks the decision was right and only one age group - the over 65s - who do.

I expect and know this can only change sooner or later.  The question for politicians is what do they do when most people, in all age groups and all regions think Brexit was a disaster?  Who will be the first to propose a new referendum?

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