Rundle’s UK: Jack Straw takes the stand, Chilcot becomes the new Watergate
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Seven am arrival at Liverpool street station, off the early train from Stansted, an enormous folded shed on the Cambridge fens, a bacon and ketchup sandwich for breakfast, blue-grey sky out the main entrance, and the bone-drenching wet cold. “You gonna get on the esc’lator or you gonna stan’ vere all effing day?” Ah, blessed blighty, I would kneel down and kiss the ground, if i weren’t sure I’d catch something. Two weeks ago, the whole of Britain was shrouded in snow, an occurrence that made for a rare burst of enthusiasm in a dreary and trying time. London and the south-east had its first white Christmas for decades, and millions got to engage in a series of traditional British activities, such as the instant suspension of the entire public transport system, and people freezing to death in their cars during routine expeditions to buy a microwaved pastie. In a country where most people would rather talk about the weather than have sex, the big snow, combining the thrill of the extreme with the tedium of meteorology, has kept people going for weeks. It was understandable that it led the news bulletins at the time, but it is still leading them now — “… it’s cold, but nothing like it was two weeks ago, remember that? Wooooh” etc. But Britons don’t have a lot to marvel at, at the moment. The grey indifferent skies reflect the mood on earth. The recession has bit hard, with half a dozen familiar store chains going bust, leaving big gaps in the high street. The most spectacular and disturbing was the UK arm of the Borders book chain, which had huge flagship stores in Oxford Street and Soho, and just went pffft last November. Not a trading out, not a winnowing down — the whole chain just shut, the stores are still empty, and only a printed A4 notice directing inquiries to the administrator’s office gives any clue they were ever there. For many, the collapse of Borders was a sign that a recession was really here. Woolworths had collapsed a year earlier — but it was simply a dying brand, waiting for the final coup. Others, such as the CD/DVD chain Zavvi, had been idiotic enterprises from the start. But Borders was slacker pomo lifemode distilled to its very chai latte essence, part of the furniture of contemporary existence. The fact that it can go in a heartbeat was a chilling reminder that a lot of other things might be less secure than was once imagined. So it is a time for national doubt and introspection. A time when Britons are being borne back into the past more than the future, with the Chilcot Inquiry into UK participation in the Iraq War providing revelation after revelation. Today, Jack Straw took the stand, the first currently serving cabinet member so to do — and promptly landed his erstwhile leader, Mr Tony, even further in it. Looking, as he always does, like a shifty Nazi dentist caught in Bolivia, and frantically manufacturing an alibi for the years 1939-45, Straw claimed that the Iraq War decision had been his toughest and most wrenching decision during the Blair years, and that he had had “a secret plan to keep the UK out of the war” — by offering support, but no troops, pretty much the formula Harold Wilson used to stay out of active engagement in Vietnam. There’s no reason to disbelieve him, but his opposition to the Bush-Blair scheme to launch a full-scale occupation and invasion wasn’t enough to prompt him to resign, as Robin Cook had resigned. Nor was there any likelihood of that happening — Straw knew it would split the government down the middle. The real revelation in his evidence was that he believed Blair’s correspondence with Bush over the months leading up to the war took regime change and full occupation as a given, and that its tone was tantamount to a confession of breaching international law, and conning the UN. “Would you have written to Mr Bush in the same way?” Straw was asked, and after some attempt at dodging through very English-style semantics (“… Well no since he and I are different persons, we’d do things differently” thank you, Wittgenstein) conceded that no, the tone — i.e. bellicose sycophancy — wouldn’t have been his chosen mode. Since Mr Tony is to return to give evidence to the inquiry, Straw has landed him right in it — giving him near-solitary responsibility for the decision to run with total war at all costs. The last person Blair could turn to as a co-conspirator is … Gordon Brown. Which may be why Brown announced late this evening that he had now agreed to appear at the inquiry, before rather than after the election. Whether explicitly so or otherwise, the decision was clearly contingent upon what Straw said and the Cabinet underlings are now united in a common plan — sheet it all home to Mr Tony, one way or another. Day by day, Chilcot is starting to have a Watergateish feel to it — a legal-political process put in train due to irresistible pressure, and now drawing all behind it. Little wonder, with the spectacle of not one, but two prime ministers fronting up to explain themselves to a legal panel — and one being conducted in what looks like a third-floor conference room at the Birmingham Radisson hotel, the day after the Toner Cartridge sales annual meeting had vacated — other political news gets not much of a look-in. The Tories launched their election campaign last week, but you’d barely know it (which is very much how they like it). In the aftermath of war, in the draughty, half-empty high streets, Britons are focused for the moment on what went wrong, less on what comes next. This is the first dispatch in an ongoing series by Guy Rundle from the UK as he documents the run-up to the British election. |
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15 Comments
Cliches about bleak Britain, Jack Straw fudging, etc..I hope impecunious Crikey isn’t paying for this- it’s all on Sky News.
And injections of tossemots like”slacker pomo lifemode distilled to its very chai latte essence” are excruciating pose-prose.
Not everyone gets/can afford Sky News.
I wish that someone, somewhere, would investigate the untruths which the Australian public were fed about Iraq - specifically, ‘it’s not about regime change’ and, ‘we’ll only be there for a few months’.
Rundle’s description of the general misery rampant in the UK confirms the almost daily complaints and distress calls and emails I receive from family and friends, who, despite personal resilience and still, fortuitously, some personal wealth and rewarding jobs, are suffering badly from doom and gloom syndrome. It sounds a godawful place to be just now and of course, this will have a great effect on the election.
If Rundle on the UK election is only half as good as Rundle on the American elections then it will be Crikey’s money well spent.
I enjoyed this article very much. Guy Rundle has some really nice turns of phrase. I particularly liked “Looking….like a shifty Nazi dentist caught in Bolivia” and “conducted in what looks like a third-floor conference room at the Birmingham Radisson hotel, the day after the Toner Cartridge sales annual meeting had vacated”.
I’d rather read Rundle than watch Sky
Agreed, good article Guy.
YOu have to love him! Almost replaces Mungo in my heart. Looking forward to his missals.
Yes, Margaret, Rundle on a dull topic or a bad day is still worth reading. However, I don’t know how much on this deathly subject or on the dreary leaden-skies grungy Brits I can deal with. (Yeah, it is pathological with me, I lived there for too long, the last 5 years against my will. I don’t know what drives Guy back there regularly except he does seem to have a bit of S&M about him.) And all that royalty stuff — we just had a few days of Prince William and that was two days too much.
We’ve got to get a campaign up to bully Crikey into funding trips across/under the channel for Rundle — for him and for us.
yes Frank, but the Crikeyistas can’t get enough of this stylishly narcissistic intellectual exhibitionism, so expect truckloads more of it.
I worried about him arriving at Victoria but Liverpool St!! After “the low hills of my…” Flatland (apologies to A. Mole) I look forward to reports from the front (or depths).
Be of good cheer & gird up thy loins. You have my total sympathy, Guy.
Some of youse have missed the point about Sky News. Rundle’s ramble contains two points only: gloomy Britain and Jack Straw. Even Tabloid Sky can manage that. The rest do better. If you’re going to do potboilers, at least turn the gas on.
We’ll put up with the strained, derivative style if there’s some substance.
Bob D: I’ve noticed how when one criticises the style/content of provincial institutions such as Rundle, Gawenda et al, the loyalists emerge (often chucking gratuitous personal insults). Ironic, innit? Headkicking, anarchic, feisty Crikey. The sycophancy! (Evan, I’m winking at you…).
I’d be embarrassed…
And when Rundle does deign to slum it down among the comments, it’s usually to deliver an unimaginative insult, like “take the medication” etc.
Seeing Old Glassjaw asleep at the airport, I could clearly see the signature through the stubble and food detritus under his chin : Lalique.
Oh man, you are officially Mr Grumpy. Being of vaguely Fenian stock (surname is gaelic for shield apparently) I like these ‘ashtray of Europe’ type reality references ever since I was dumped by an English girlfriend, decades ago: They think we are “simple” folk here Frank. You too. Not honest, not direct. Simple. I’d save my sympathy when it comes to the condescending English.
As for Wills - the great irony I reckon is that he must surely be a greenie like his father. And he must know what his loyal forebears did to the Aborigines, even worse than 1 million dead Irish famine. You have got to hand it to their (gormless?) royal chutzpah, and the power of illusion locally.
and what of your whiny, grumpy attention seeking, Bob? How much more can we expect of that? If you don’t like a writer don’t read him. Surely you’re busy enough singlehandedly saving aboriginal australia from itself…
Dear Kim
You are so right. It is a busy life, and I probably shouldn’t waste it reading some of this stuff. However I hope I can continue to regale you occasionally with my whiny grumpy thoughts, and offer you the opportunity to shovel critique my way.
But I make one plea for your consideration: I simply wasn’t aware that you have exempted Rundle from criticism. I certainly won’t make that mistake again! Please forgive me.
Your humble servant
Bob D
Lovely, good old fashioned ‘pommie-bashing’ just before Australia day when as usual it can be expected that the usual flag wearing racist bigots will remind the world (though nobody really cares) just what an insignificant and unimportant backwater Australia really is on the world stage.
Don’t get me wrong, I love living here, golf in winter, a dream job and a house three times bigger than I could afford in the UK just 15 mins from the heart of Melbourne, beautiful beautiful life.
That seemingly every individual and even the country itself feels the need to try and prove in some idiotic fashion that Australia is better than *insert country* is tiresome beyond belief. Nobody cares, there is no UN register of ‘best countries’, no league of ‘bestness’. For pity sake just enjoy what we have and accept that even though Australia has the best cricket team, is ‘competitive’ with anyone on a rugby field, is catching up in football (not bloody ‘soccer’), sporting prowess, good weather or even an economy created and sustained through ‘the spade’ irrespective of what KRudd, Abbott or even the new head of the ICC might tell you), won’t convince any sane person to initiate the ‘bestest’ country list.
One more thing, Rundle’s ‘pose prose’ as Frank Campbell brilliantly called it, is probably the best example of how to construct a cliché as I have seen in years but then give he has the national disease maybe he’s looking for a headline is a publication as insightful as The Herald Sun like “Aussies thrash *insert country* in cliché stoush”?
Good to see people maintain a soft spot for jolly old blighty - grey skies, dumped by girlfriend: it must be hell on earth. Why so many Orzzies go there is…..ah yeah, right.
“The Scots, the Irish, the Welsh - gentle, kind, wonderful people. The English: pah, huh, spit, grumble.”
What a load of old bollocks.
I’m sure Guy won’t be dissing les Poms de Terre any time soon, certainly not after his stint on Red Pepper etc.