Hugo Rifkind
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It also, as an argument, seems to run entirely counter to basic New Labour political instincts. Historically, the only thing they haven’t wanted to regulate has been banks, and that was probably just because they didn’t understand how to. If it looks fun, and people in Britain want to do it, bang, tax it, regulate it, bugger it up. Even the stuff that looked socially liberal — the minimum wage, civil partnerships — has really been motivated by an all-pervading desire just to muscle in. It’s almost inconceivable that Gordon Brown doesn’t think that government should control the price of booze. It ticks all his favourite boxes. Puritanism, salvation through complex regulation, health, poverty and (special soft Gordon voice here) the welfare of children. If anything is Brownism, this is.
Still, you can see where he was coming from. At this point in time, here and now, and with his fattish shoulders still bearing the scars of the whipping he got over the 10p tax debacle, Gordon Brown doesn’t want to be the man who pushed up the price of booze for the poor. And especially not if it looks like he’s following the lead of the pesky, Browner-than-thou Scottish Executive. Principles be damned. Once Sir Liam’s proposals were public, politically speaking, he had to shoot them down.
Only, and this is the thing that’s bothering me, how did these proposals become public? They didn’t come from Sir Liam. He seemed quite annoyed by it, slating the ‘heat of the moment decisions’ which were ‘taken about how to handle this in the media’. According to the Guardian, the proposals came out in ‘what appears to have been a ministerial leak’. And according to the Times the leak was ‘blamed widely on Downing Street’.
Eh? The Prime Minister looked like an authoritarian tax-grasper when the idea was floated, and a twitchy hypocrite when he shot it down. Why leak something that makes you look bad, twice? Maybe, if you know how to serve a lobby ball, this sort of thing makes perfect sense. Out here, though, it doesn’t at all. It looks like we have government that is thrashing and flailing itself to death, and couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. However much it cost.
If you’ll forgive a short spot of self-serving musing on last week’s news, I’ve been trying to figure out why journalists all hate Julie Myerson so much for writing about her son’s “battle” with “drugs”. I’m not saying they shouldn’t, I’m just trying to figure out why they do.
The public at large probably think she’s scum. There’s nothing remarkable in that, though, because the public at large probably think we are all scum. I had my first child a few weeks ago, and I’ve lost count, literally, of the number of friends and relatives who have asked, usually quite sniggeringly, whether I’m going to write about her. Do a parenting column. Ultimately, do a Myerson. ‘No,’ I’ve said, and I’ve meant it. It’s not a moral thing, entirely. It’s just a matter of taste.
Contrary to what most people think, not many hacks actually do open up their lives. Columnists aren’t always like their columns, just like actors aren’t always like their roles. Of those I’ve met from this parish, I’d say that Taki is and Jeremy Clarke is, and pretty much everybody else isn’t, quite. Sometimes the voice matches the face, sometimes it just doesn’t. I’ve often been told I write like I’m a middle-aged man, and I’m not. At least, not yet.
Even in an unabashedly confessional column — the sort of thing at which this magazine excels — the skill usually lies in taking the bits it is OK to share, and painting a picture without having to add the bits that it is not. That’s my point, really. Brutal honesty in writing can sometimes take your breath away, but Myerson’s honesty is far more mundane. Anybody who can string a sentence together could do what she has done, if they were brutal and selfish and mercenary enough. I think the public assumes most hacks are, which is why they also probably assume we’re all scum. But secretly, most are not.
Imagine a nightclub full of pole-dancers. Imagine that one of these pole-dancers will always go a bit further. She’ll take her customers into the back room. Go all the way. Turn tricks. She’ll make a name for herself and earn a lot of money, but her fellow pole-dancers will pretty quickly start to hate her. She’s putting them under a lot of pressure, you see. They could all do what she does, but they’ve opted not to. And the more she does it, the more they feel they ought to do the same. That’s why they hate her. And that’s why we all hate Julie Myerson.
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