I was quick to bow out of reporting on the Japanese earthquake yesterday, remarking that this was an area where the blogs could not immediately complete. Unless there, actually on the scene, it is difficult for us to be anything other than derivative, lifting other people's work without offering any significant added value.
The issue that may emerge as one which will need the greatest analysis may be the nuclear reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi complex, where the chances of a release seem high. Even with the death and destruction around, this is getting special attention. It may have a significant impact on the ongoing energy debate. You can bet that the greenies will exploit any problems to the maximum extent that they can.
On a broader canvas, in suggesting that the blogs are not best equipped to pursue the earthquake story, one also looks at the print editions of the newspapers today in the newsagent. Then reluctantly buying one of them, one wonders why they bother with their style of reportage. In a fast-moving story, theirs is all yesterday's news, already left behind by television and internet coverage. Anyone seriously interested in keeping informed will rely on those sources, rather than tired – and space-limited – newspaper copy.
All the copy really does is reflect the media tendency to obsess about the hystérie du jour (not that Japan is hysteria, per sec - we are talking about the media response). They tend to clear the decks and report only on one thing at a time, and very little else.
One might have thought that a true and effective role for newspapers is to "watch our backs", keeping tabs on all the news and events - not just those on the telly - keeping us informed and reminding us that, even with the tragedy and disaster of Japan, life goes on. However, keeping a sense of perspective, and being able to follow multiple agenda, is a sign of maturity which seems to have evaded the media fraternity.
In that context, I don't know how many readers picked up from my last ruminative piece, the apparently bizarre behaviour of MPs in the situation I raised. There we had London in flames, with what was possibly one of the most dreadful periods of the war in that particular locality, and we had this group calmly discussing "war aims" – the way things should be when the war, at some time in the unspecified future, was over.
Actually, though, the behaviour was neither bizarre, nor even in the slightest bit irrational. There was nothing else the MPs could or should have been doing to address the immediate situation. And part of their jobs – an important part – was to look to the future. It came under the heading, "life goes on" – the routine and not so routine tasks must go on regardless.
For me personally, this is a particularly difficult time, for precisley that reason. With everything going on around me, life has to go on. In the latter stages of writing my book, this is turning out to be one of the most complex – and time-consuming - npieces of writing I have ever done. I have an issue here which is actually, incredibly topical and one of enormous and current political significance, which has been neglected and mistreated through the decades, distorting our perception of who we are, and of our politics.
Stuck in my groove, however, I can quite see why past writers have taken the line of least resistance, and gone for highly simplistic – and thus heavily distorted – versions of history. Dealing with the reality is so complicated that, for many, it is obviously too difficult and not worth the effort.
What we have in the story I am writing is an amalgam of at least five separate strains – making it almost like a soap opera with several plot lines running simultaneously – each interacting and affecting each other. How much simpler it is to write of just one plot lines, ignoring the others and their interactions. Simple it is though, but very far from reality.
The complex mix that I am synthesising tells me that the Battle of Britain about whiich I am writing is very different from the one ablout which we read. What we saw fought in 1940 was a battle that is still being fought today. It was far more of a political than it was a military event - the shooting was was just the backdrop. The distinction then was that the military issues brought the politics into high focus and created pressures for their resolution.
That was what the "war aims" debate was all about, a shorthand for the debate about the future, the nature and shape of society, and where we as a nation should be going.
As I get a feel for the subject – that only comes with months of study and almost total immersion – I am coming to the conclusion that there were two strands of the debate then. One was about how Britain should look in the aftermath of war, in particular its place in the world. Then there was a separate – but parallel – debate about how liberated Europe should look.
I am not giving anything away if I suggest that the former was largely suppressed – ruthlessly so - by Churchill. He was a man of the past, defender of the status quo, of King and Empire. On 10 November 1942, in the wake of the victory at el Alamein he famously declared: "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire". There were going to be no debates on war aims – no "new world order" - while he was about.
The debate about the shape of Europe, however, continued apace. Churchill could not control or suppress that. So when it came to Dean Acheson's "end of Empire" comment, the lack of debate – and thinking – about Britain's post empire role had left an intellectual void. In their bid to fill the vacuum, the political classes rushed into "Europe". For them, it was the only game in town.
That is where we are today - right now. The debate suppressed in 1940 was one we still have not had. The context has changed – instead of a post-war Britain, we are now looking at the shape of a "post-Europe" Britain. But it is the same debate - the debate suppressed has become the debate delayed. It is one we must now have.
This, after all, is the Richard Stokes prescription: it is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one. And looking at our forum on this and the many interesting contributions, the one thing that does emerge is that we have a very long way to go.
We seem to have got out of the habit of visionary thinking, of deciding on shapes, ideals and the very nature of society. But, without that, we will never be free of our chains. As we found at the end of the war, change without vision is simply to swap one set of chains for another.
COMMENT: NEW "ISM" THREAD
Things aren't going too well for the Prime Minister's boast of leading "the greenest government ever", says Booker. In 2007, Mr Cameron made a big play of opening a factory in Coventry to build electric-powered vans. Last week, after making only 400 vehicles in four years, the firm, Modec, sacked half its workforce and went into administration with debts of £40 million.
But there is just no end to how daft this whole greenie experiment has become.
COMMENT THREAD
This is one time and one area where the blogs cannot compete ... the global news system provides the coverage and there is very little, sensibly, that we can add – other than our profound sympathies and admiration for how the ever-resourceful Japanese are already getting to grips with their new crisis.
Further comment might be inappropriate, but a thread is open on the comments to monitor further developments. However, we need to be aware of the Jo Moore effect - not least with the Lib-Dim springfest - and the financial effects also bear watching.
COMMENT THREAD
In the latter stages of the book-writing, the conclusion I am coming to is that the Battle of Britain was as much, if not more, a political event than it was a "shoot 'em up" battle. One tends to think that, when a war breaks out, the focus is then on fighting and winning the war, and that normal politics is suspended.
In 1940, this was very far from the case. Political issues – such as European political integration – were being widely discussed, all in the more general context of defining British "war aims". It was not simply enough to fight and win, we had to have a reason for fighting, or so the argument went.
This was discussed in a parliamentary debate on 15 October 1940. As the wreckage of London lay around them, MPs gathered to call find out whether the Government was prepared to make a definitive statement on war aims. But Churchill refused, point blank. He was guardian of the status quo, suppressing any debate on the issue.
Churchill's Information Minister Duff Cooper, very much supported the idea, and had been speaking secretly for it in Cabinet. On this day, he expressed his support as far as he could, but had been brought up sharply by Richard Stokes. He was the Labour MP for Ipswich, a Military Cross winner in the First World War (and bar) and soon to become an arch critic of the area bombing policy.
Cooper, said Stokes, had enunciated what we were fighting against, but not what we were fighting for. "[It] is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one, and the sooner that [is] stated the better".
That brings us right up to date and is the thinking behind my piece on a new "ism". It lies at the heart of my long-running dispute with UKIP and my frustration with the Eurosceptic cause. Both are very good at telling us what we are fighting against. But, as Stokes said, it is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one.
It is all very well wanting to get out of the EU – the "negative object". But what would we do with our new-found freedom? Where is our "positive object"? Until we have one, we are going nowhere. We emerged from the war without one, and that is why we lost the peace.
The one "positive object" to emerge intact was the idea of European integration. When we failed to maintain Churchill's status quo, with the end of Empire, intellectually, we in Britain had nowhere to go. Looking with envy at an apparently resurgent Europe, our ruling classes therefore rushed to join in - their bid to fill the intellectual void. Now, it still is the "only game in town", which is why we are still losing the battle.
We will continue to lose that battle until we are able to deal with the issues put by Richard Stokes, back on that awful day of 15 October 1940. We need a positive object ... a new "ism".
COMMENT: NEW "ISM" THREAD
Already, they are in a situation where accumulated broken promises and the resulting breakdown of trust, the sense that they are out of touch, their internal party management problems, and the classic tendency to blame the media for their woes, all combine to give the impression of a political group in terminal decay.
To that, you can add to that the news that the Lib-Dims have gone into the red for first time in history and are having to quit their historic Cowley Street HQ – although it does not stop there.
In what should be his hour of glory as he is about to address his spring conference, Eurotrash Cleggis having to tell his party to "hold your nerve".
This is against "the humiliating backdrop" of sixth place in last week's Barnsley Central by-election, and a YouGov survey that puts the Lib-Dims on just 9 percent, trailing well behind their Conservative coalition partners on 34 percent and Labour on 45 percent.
Given just how low Labour's stock had fallen last year, and the lacklustre performance of the Miliband Bros, it is absolutely incredible that Labour is actually showing an 11-point lead, the largest YouGov result since the election.
Just add a tiny but important detail on the Tories – that Ruth Lea has decided not to renew her membership – and you get another facet that goes towards the bigger picture.
On this, I think it can be said with confidence that you would have to go a very long way back before you found an administration with less of a popular mandate, with less electoral support and enjoying less public confidence – and with less grass-roots backing.
This coincides with a period of acute tension, where the Cleggerons are having to implement a programme for which they have no mandate, precious little media support and which would be, even in the best of times, unpopular, having at the same time alienated some of the core interest groups.
If one were now to attempt a prediction on where this is all going, one might be tempted to say that the Cleggerons have the one advantage – their direction of travel is very clear and certain. The trouble for them is that the picture tells you what that direction is – all the way down, without stopping.
How interesting it is that the imagery came from here, just as I was about to look for a Titanic representation – a report on electoral meltdown in a Salford local council by-election. As the Lib-Dims plummet to the bottom, it will come as no surprise to anyone here that we will be applauding it on its way down – even if we are then left in a rather cold and draughty lifeboat.
But what this does tell us is that a political rescue plan is now beginning to take on a degree of considerable urgency, as the traditional political merry-go-round is no longer providing any answers to our predicament. We need some serious answers, or we as a society will be following the Lib-Dims to their watery grave.
COMMENT: "GENTLEMAN" THREAD
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