Terror Twilight
Have Tony Blair and Gordon Brown come to an understanding or was it just serendipity? Days after the thirty-two hour wrangle between the houses of Lords and Commons over Blair’s terror bill, Brown let the waters clear with a budget designed to reassure the country and keep the city nodding in mathematical understanding.
This may just be self-preservation on Brown’s part. Even he would not sink the entire ship just to have the pleasure of watching Blair drown. And the waters run deeper than apparent at first glance; Brown was unusually quiet during the entire terror bill fracas, quiet enough to keep the sharks from circling. So whether he is going it alone or was being consciously on-message, he knows he must behave himself or else he will soon need to find a bucket and start bailing.
The budget has already been analysed and re-analysed, so I will not repeat the details here. What I will say is that we need to prevent the budget from being delivered close to an election; no matter how reliable the chancellor appears, the spectre of party politics will always haunt the sums. This seems fairly obvious but who the hell would pass such a law? It is a great weapon for the incumbent party and nobody would dare volunteer to disarm, even if it does carry the risk of blowing up in their own faces.
So have we all conveniently forgotten about the prevention of terror act now that we believe a compromise was reached? Ah, but who was interested in the first place? If the country was universally against it then the opposition would still be beating Blair over the head. But no matter how much the bill was hated by opinion leaders, the Fear of Foreigners cannot be discounted. This Fear is a widespread plague and is the perfect right environment for draconian government measures against a supposed Enemy to thrive. But the chief factor in this is that many, many people will have heard about the bill and shrugged, thinking it did not affect them...it is not About Them, it is about Others. So, they reason, why not bring on the injustice and give those darkies hell?
It is the same with capital punishment. String ‘em up, they cry... “They”, of course, are upstanding citizens to whom state punishment is an abstract concept...except when they nearly brain someone else's children to death in their too-fast cars and thus getting them a speeding ticket. But apart from this, to these people punishment happens elsewhere and it really does not matter that a bunch of strangers are killed. And to hell with whether they are guilty or not.
Okay...I am stepping hastily away from that sidestreet.
Returning to the budget, the speech lasted fifty minutes and ended with a crescendo of crowd-pleasing. This is to be expected, although how much impact the speech itself makes on the voters is undecided since most people simply pore over the bullet points in the subsequent papers. But Brown knows the budget is a thing that stands sweating in the spotlight. It is not some late night drone in a near-empty Commons. He has to make an impact...not to plump up his own position but because he knows that how well he performs on the day will guide the political ship for the next few weeks. A crucial point to remember so close to an election.
But until the climax of the speech the budget was its usual plodding self. To liven it up without obscuring the message would be difficult but not impossible...what Brown needs to do is to deliver the speech in a stadium, his main points illustrated with the kind of massive picture-based score board you see in American sports. Needless to say, an organist would accompany him.
There would be a half-time show. Backbenchers would dress up in massive pound signs and march around the stadium to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Money. Then the opposition would pop up as a choir in the stand singing Simply Red’s Money’s Too Tight to Mention. Then a parade of chimps would unicycle past, for no other reason than the fact it would be funny. The show would be topped off with the 1812 Overture playing over a fireworks display, and may or may not involve the Elephant of Doubt being launched into the air with half a kilo of dynamite stuck up its arse and a radio receiver so that it can be remotely detonated. Cruel, yes, but this is a momument to capitalism we are staging here...so don’t give me that do goody-good bullshit.
What? Oh dear. Anyone from the RSPCA please disregard the previous paragraph. And anyone who knows about money, please disregard all the other paragraphs as well. It’s a kindness.
This may just be self-preservation on Brown’s part. Even he would not sink the entire ship just to have the pleasure of watching Blair drown. And the waters run deeper than apparent at first glance; Brown was unusually quiet during the entire terror bill fracas, quiet enough to keep the sharks from circling. So whether he is going it alone or was being consciously on-message, he knows he must behave himself or else he will soon need to find a bucket and start bailing.
The budget has already been analysed and re-analysed, so I will not repeat the details here. What I will say is that we need to prevent the budget from being delivered close to an election; no matter how reliable the chancellor appears, the spectre of party politics will always haunt the sums. This seems fairly obvious but who the hell would pass such a law? It is a great weapon for the incumbent party and nobody would dare volunteer to disarm, even if it does carry the risk of blowing up in their own faces.
So have we all conveniently forgotten about the prevention of terror act now that we believe a compromise was reached? Ah, but who was interested in the first place? If the country was universally against it then the opposition would still be beating Blair over the head. But no matter how much the bill was hated by opinion leaders, the Fear of Foreigners cannot be discounted. This Fear is a widespread plague and is the perfect right environment for draconian government measures against a supposed Enemy to thrive. But the chief factor in this is that many, many people will have heard about the bill and shrugged, thinking it did not affect them...it is not About Them, it is about Others. So, they reason, why not bring on the injustice and give those darkies hell?
It is the same with capital punishment. String ‘em up, they cry... “They”, of course, are upstanding citizens to whom state punishment is an abstract concept...except when they nearly brain someone else's children to death in their too-fast cars and thus getting them a speeding ticket. But apart from this, to these people punishment happens elsewhere and it really does not matter that a bunch of strangers are killed. And to hell with whether they are guilty or not.
Okay...I am stepping hastily away from that sidestreet.
Returning to the budget, the speech lasted fifty minutes and ended with a crescendo of crowd-pleasing. This is to be expected, although how much impact the speech itself makes on the voters is undecided since most people simply pore over the bullet points in the subsequent papers. But Brown knows the budget is a thing that stands sweating in the spotlight. It is not some late night drone in a near-empty Commons. He has to make an impact...not to plump up his own position but because he knows that how well he performs on the day will guide the political ship for the next few weeks. A crucial point to remember so close to an election.
But until the climax of the speech the budget was its usual plodding self. To liven it up without obscuring the message would be difficult but not impossible...what Brown needs to do is to deliver the speech in a stadium, his main points illustrated with the kind of massive picture-based score board you see in American sports. Needless to say, an organist would accompany him.
There would be a half-time show. Backbenchers would dress up in massive pound signs and march around the stadium to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Money. Then the opposition would pop up as a choir in the stand singing Simply Red’s Money’s Too Tight to Mention. Then a parade of chimps would unicycle past, for no other reason than the fact it would be funny. The show would be topped off with the 1812 Overture playing over a fireworks display, and may or may not involve the Elephant of Doubt being launched into the air with half a kilo of dynamite stuck up its arse and a radio receiver so that it can be remotely detonated. Cruel, yes, but this is a momument to capitalism we are staging here...so don’t give me that do goody-good bullshit.
What? Oh dear. Anyone from the RSPCA please disregard the previous paragraph. And anyone who knows about money, please disregard all the other paragraphs as well. It’s a kindness.
posted by Jamie at 4:37 PM
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