Ugliness

Isabel Hilton in The Guardian (I do read some other newspapers, it’s just that none of them let me link to their stuff properly!) reminds us how much the current White House looks like the eminently unlovable Reagan White House (and shockingly unlike the one in The West Wing).

This ugly continuity across the decades – which looks like an irrepressibly corrupt strand of American democratic life – ought to contrast starkly with the freshness, openness and… well… morality of the Blair administration (the one I voted for, the one I still give £10 a month to).

That it doesn’t much any more – that Blair, Straw, Hoon et al apparently want to close the gap with their American colleagues ? is more depressing than I can say.

British politics is largely free of free range snakes like Poindexter and Abrams and Negroponte and this is a substantive good thing but the Kelly case, the dossiers (dodgy and otherwise), the out-of-control spin, the manufacture of politically contingent ‘narratives’ and the sloppy abuse of the government’s huge parliamentary majority contribute to a real and visible decay of British democracy that’s really getting me down…

1 comment

  1. The sheer Guardian-ness of it!
    New Labour should be moral and lovely but, er, it’s not.
    George Bush should be stupid and evil and hated by Americans, but… he’s not.
    Please- try reading some other newspapers, there are plenty of good ones, like the Economist, the Times etc.
    Don’t deal in cliches!

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