Skipper

Boris Johnson is certainly a phenomenon in British politics. Ian Hislop says he's 'our Berlusconi' only funnier'
Maybe, I think he's a tiny bit like Chauncey Gardener, the Peter sellers character in Being There who fooled everyone into thinking he was wise when his head was empty.

Yet Boris is clearly a very clever chap so is it all a pose in a fiendish plot to capture the towering heights of the nation? I saw the BBC interview on Sunday and unlike the Guardian did not think Boris's interview was a 'cycle crash': I thought he handled it as usual, rolling with the punches, smirking and shrugging away accusations which would have sunk a lesser man. I also saw the BBC profile last night and thought it a (transparently) collective effort by his family, using the rugby playing analogy favoured by Boris, to hoist him in the line-out to catch that ball he years for to snaffle and carry over the line into Number 10.

Boris is astonishing in his ability to elicit smiles of recognition and of pleasure: he cheers us up. 'What the fuck are you doing her Boris?' is a line used by a drug dealer, pleased notwithstanding, during an early morning police bust which included the publicity hungry old Etonian. He reaches outside the tie-wearing, blue rinsed confines of the Tory tribe and makes everyone smile. Me too? Me too. So much chutzpah, you've got to warm to it, even if he is a ruthless, egotistical unreconstructed bed-hopping old fashioned Tory.

I was surprised Sonia Purnell, his unflattering biographer, was not included in Cockerell's piece. She got her say in the press:

Yet there are other reasons for Johnson to want to "get on with it" – not least the danger that his gilded reputation, which has won him two victories in London, may be about to lose its shine. A recent public meeting in Catford, south-east London, saw an embattled mayor branded a "coward" for failing to stand up for a hospital facing closure. Looking uncharacteristically uneasy, he endured a barrage of heckling and boos from the crowd over other subjects too, from police and fire cuts to wasting public money on vanity projects like his underused cable car. There is always a moment when a politician's actions (or lack of them) finally catch up with him, and this was the first major indication Johnson's may not be far off.

But it did included Max Hastings, Boris's former boss at the Telegraph, Hastings was clear, like Conrad Black (so he's persona grata again is he?) that Boris was a lovable rogue and no reference made to his view expressed in the ST some time ago that he would emigrate to Canada if Boris ever became PM. Michael White today in The Guardian however, thought he had spotted the guy's achilles heel:
 

 

Four points about our Press 
1. Supposedly we've had no press regulation by the government for 300 years. But surely our legal system offers a form of press regulation? In terms of libel laws this can be pretty strict too.
2. Surely the people who own the media- Murdoch, Rothermeres et. al- exert more than a little control over what is allowed to appear in the press and other outlets? In other words, it's never been exactly 'free'?
3. Has it not been proved beyond all doubt by Leveson that voluntary press regulation has not worked satisfactorily in the past and is unlikely to do so in the future?
4. Other countries like Germany, France and Sweden have laws regulating their presses without worldwide condemnation or accusations that they have abandoned 

Having partly laid out my stall on the topic I'm aware of the vigorous debate on the issue. Opinion has veered wildly on this issue ever since Leveson began to interrogate his witnesses. Initially, shocked by the revelations, a consensus seemed to emerge that the press needed to be brought to heel. Hacked Off were promised Leveson's recommendations by Cameron and we kind of expected an easy route to a new world of regulation. Then Dave called a halt to the consensus and would not hear of any statutory control to sully Britain's shining record as freer and free media country.

Then voices in the press itself were raised praising Dave's principled stand, while Miliband and Clegg agreed the full Leveson rather than half of him was essential.Deadlock ensured until the three party leaders got together and sought to find a solution based around the idea of a Royal Charter, an ancient device which, it was hoped, would deliver the benefits of statute without any of the costs.. Nearly there, or so we are told, Dave called them off, claiming the distance between the three parties was too great to be bridged. Deadlock again! Then Monday morning 18th March, we are told they've been up all night eating kit-kats and reaching an agreement. It seems Dave has conceded on several key points. Hooray! we cry that the divisive vote has been superseded by an agreement which seems to satisfy everyone. The honeymoon lasted about five minutes.The Economist sketched in the essence of the measure:

To deter future political meddling, the charter specifies that it cannot be altered without a two-thirds majority in both the Commons and the Lords. A short clause added to an unrelated bill gives that supermajority requirement the force of law  This seemed like a canny compromise. It enabled Mr Cameron to claim he was not creating a press statute while allowing Mr Clegg and Mr Miliband, who favour much tougher regulation, to assert they had done precisely that. Bar a few Tory rebels, MPs also welcomed another measure, which would impose punitive damages on any misbehaving newspaper that elected not to join the new system of regulation.

But the efficacy of the new scheme depends on how many publications sign up and already we see The Telegraph, and Mail groups plus news International, not to mention The Spectator and Private Eye, reject the package. The Economist notes the collaboration between Clegg and Miliband and wonders if it presages the shape of a coalition after 2015.  It concludes on a pessimistic note however:
 
 

         

When meeting the victims of phone hacking Cameron promised he would accept and implement its recommendations, 'as long as they weren't bonkers'. Well, nobody serious has even begun to accuse them of attaining that state, so one might have expected a tripartite political agreement as to the business of replacing the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) with a more powerful successor. But, of course, this didn't happen as Cameron suddenly discovered he was a campaigning Tom Paine type radical who will defy the world for untrammeled freedom of expression. On no account would he accept any legislative grounding for any new regulator. Leveson felt the press had proved so ungovernable that any regulator had to be grounded in law or the press would find ways around any restrictions. 

Or was it more to do with the fact that the Conservatives, and Cameron in particular, has always perceived a vested interest in supporting the consensus in the generally right-wing supporting press? Hmmm. By all accounts the three party talks on establishing the regulator via a Royal Charter- the same authority that underlies the BBC and which does not need any statutory underpinning- were close to agreement on Thursday when Cameron declared the parties were too far apart and that he was going to allow a vote on the two rival versions of a Royal Charter- the government's and the agreed Labour-Liberal Democrat version-which entails {some 'necessary' statutory grounding)  on Monday 18th March.

Cameron says he wants to break the deadlock and move on- but if Miliband and Clegg unite he'll lose so what's he really up to? I'm not sure but suspect he's acting from weakness rather than strength. If the smaller parties vote against the 'statute version' does he have a chance of prevailing with his non statute version? It must be unclear as George Eustace, is one Tory MP likely to support the rival version and he claims up to a score fellow Tories might follow suit.     

My bet is Cameron will lose his gamble and see his noble stand revealed as a cheap attempt to kowtow to vested interests. But more important than that is the collaboration Leveson has encouraged between Labour and the Lib-Dems. Always ideologically close, this temporary alliance might presage a more regular tendency which might eventually derail the whole coalition project.

Today's article by Barbara Ellen in The Observer, excoriates the 'shameless, arrogant chump', Chris Huhne for being, well, shameless and arrogant, while praising Vicky Pryce for 'not going quietly'. It's odd how this drama has seized the nation's interest; everyone has a view about it. I suppose that is because: everyone relishes a bit of schadenfreude when a powerful person suffers such a monumental fall and because we all have relationships and the affair forces us to reach judgements on how people, including ourselves, treat those closest to them.

Huhne's certainly deserves criticism for his casual attitude towards his wife- telling her of his affair while watching a football match on the telly, not to mention assuming she would take the speeding points hit for him-and he has manifested too many symptoms of arrogance let alone blind and ruthless ambition, for us to acquit him of those faults as well. It might seem crass to defend Huhne but I genuinely feel sorry for the guy: he's lost his job, his career, his wife and, temporarily at least, the regard of his children(if he loves his son, as he clearly does, this relationship will probably be repaired). OK, you might say, it's substantially his own fault but a friend of mine always insists 'wounds are no less painful for being self inflicted'. To observe such wanton self destruction is a deeply saddening thing, whether it's addiction, loss of control or, as in this case, just foolishness..

Maybe one cannot forgive Huhne but one can understand him a bit more by recognising that politicians to succeed do become narrowly fixated on career progress.Politicians though, are not so different from the rest of  us, epitomising our strengths as well as weaknesses. We can't expect, in a democracy, to be governed by people free of personal failings.  Huhne is a very resourceful and able man who was a very effective minister as well as one who had the backbone to stand up to Cameron and Osborne in Cabinet His party, not to mention his country as well, will feel keenly the absence of his contributions to public life. .   

As for Vicky, of course I feel sorry for her too- she was treated dreadfully. But revenge is not an especially noble sentiment; we all experience a decidedly guilty pleasure when indulging it. She has destroyed her husband's career and destroyed much of his life; but so has she laid waste her own.. That Chinese who coined the aphorism -'He who seeks revenge should dig two graves' clearly knew that wherof he spoke.  

The Economist recently offered a gloomy assessment of the Syrian Civil War.  "Syria looks increasingly likely to fall prey to feuding warlords, Islamists and gangs—a new Somalia rotting in the heart of the Levant."
 It goes on to comment:

 "If that happens, millions of lives will be ruined. A fragmented Syria would also feed global jihad and stoke the Middle East’s violent rivalries. Mr Assad’s chemical weapons, still secure for now, would always be at risk of falling into dangerous hands. This catastrophe would make itself felt across the Middle East and beyond. And yet the outside world, including America, is doing almost nothing to help."

With 75000 already killed and Assad still much more powerful than the rebels, something just has to be done by the west. Some of my students this week sadly shook their heads when I asked them if the west should intervene. They cited the cases of such intervention going wrong: Vietnam, of course, Afghanistan and the awful case of Iraq.But what about the times when intervention has worked? The Safe Haven in the 1990s Iraq situation to curb Saddam, Sierra Leone in 1998 and Kosovo around the same time, not to mention he more recent case of Libya. Not all those interventions solved the problems of the nations involved but they did stop the worst of the killings and one feels, this is now what the benighted Syrians are facing.

In his Chicago Speech in 1998, Blair laid down five conditions for humanitarian intervention:
Are we sure of our case? Answer yes, Assad has proved he is capable of anything to save his miserable life and position.

i) Have we exhausted diplomatic options? Yes, clearly, Assad refuses to sit down with the rebels.
ii) Have we the power to help? Sure, we can let them have the arms which will match Assad's forces.
iii) Are we prepared for the long term? After the debacle of Iraq I'm sure Syria would be handled very differently and, like libya, the Syrians would be doing the fighting.
iv) Finally, do we have any national interests involved? Well, tricky one, cos we don't. But we all have an indivisible interest in preventing dictators from slaughtering innocent people,  
I would hate to think Dictators in the present time and in the future could go to bed secure in the knowledge western powers had given up any moral responsibility for preventing evil to be committed by evil people. Obama should sod Russia and China and supply arms to the rebels, so should Hague- he really wants to anyway- and so should other EU countries.