Father forgive me, it has been seven long months since my last confession.
Since last we met, I have ventured further into non-fiction than normal, and it�s been an interesting time: I�ve spent a fair amount of tube journeys with the memoirs of politicians in various states of retirement. First up for an honourable mention is Roy Hattersley�s Who Goes Home? an entertaining account of the former deputy leader of the Labour Party�s life in politics, wittily written, and with a keen eye for the absurd, and replete with amusing anecdotes about Denis Healy, whose somewhat more weighty The Time of My Life rather dazzled me with his erudition. Both books made well-argued cases for their own wing of the Labour party, particularly Hattersley�s pro-EEC ( as it then was) and anti-unilateralist sentiments that came under vicious attack in the 1980s.
James Naughtie�s The Rivals- Blair: and Brown: the Intimate Story of a Political Marriage is not so much an account of a battle of wings of a party, but a rendering of the positively mediaeval court intrigue between the Downing Street neighbours. It usefully crystallises the Brown supremacy in economic, fiscal and social policy and the consequent reining-in of Blair�s supposedly presidential control of government, and offers an almost psychological analysis of the two men�s motives. The fact that we hear virtually nothing of Brown�s views on foreign affairs speaks volumes about the nature of where power and responsibility lie: it�s almost as if the Chancellor is hoping the Prime Minister will slip up in some foreign war in order that the supposed deal from the Granita restaurant becomes a reality. Naughtie�s image of the government as a bizarre solar system in which party figures revolve as planets around two competing suns is a stark one, and although I have a certain admiration for much of what Brown has achieved in government, the prospect of him leading government as Prime Minister without a countervailing balance similar to the one that he currently provides to Blair could be a little alarming.
Blair though, to Brown's undoubted chagrin, has yet to terminally slip on the oil of Iraq, which leads us neatly to.Robin Cook, whose The Point of Departure is a fascinating account of his tenure as Leader of the House of Commons, portraying Blair as almost an ingenu who didn�t really appreciate the Bush administration�s determination to go to war in Iraq with or without the UN�s backing; Rohan Candappa�s The Curious incident of the WMD in Iraq (can be read in 45 minutes) takes the premise a stage further whilst paying homage to Mark Haddon: an autistic Prime Minister who can only see good in his every action, and if only everybody could see things his way, then everything would be okay�..hang on here�
Perhaps delving into the psyche of our leaders is too frightening an undertaking it needs a great deal of care: Peter Singer does exactly this with The President of Good and Evil, an investigation into the moral compass of George W Bush. I started reading this on the �plane back from Philadelphia, and got a few worried glances from an elderly American couple sitting next to me; when, in conversation with them, I questioned the United States� relationship with Saudi Arabia (�oh, they�re really helping us right now,� they said) they looked as though I was about to detonate a shoebomb. Singer examines many of Bush�s policies and attitudes under the philosophical and moral microscope: Iraq, tax, gay marriage, stem-cell research, Kyoto to name but a few. After detailed dissection of all these, Bush is found wanting (well, blow me down,) but what is really needed here is a counterblast from the Bush standpoint that is as well-argued, in order to take the debate further. Still, in the final chapter, Singer considers the theory that Bush is nothing more than a "gentleman" stooge of followers of the philospher Leo Strauss, who contended that there is a false "truth" can be used to placate the masses (for example freedom, liberty, equality of opportunity, religion, "the war on terror", WMD), whilst the real truth (keeping the elite in power by fobbing off the populace with platitudes that those in the know don't believe in, and by the way, securing America's oil supplies) continues at a higher level: protecting from the multitude those who are truly great, the "philosophers"? and others who can aspire to "the peaks of man's excellence." [page 222]
It all does rather bring to mind some of the great what ifs? of recent history. Sadly, the consequences of Al Gore winning the 2000 presidential election is not one of the chapters in the largely entertaining Prime Minister Portillo and other things that never happened, a collection of essays edited by the owners of the much lamented former Politico's bookshop in Westminster. The range of styles of the suppostions ranges from the academic (what if the Liberal Party had broken through from the right?) to the almost hallucinatory fantastic short story of Michael Denzil Xavier walking into 10 Downing Street in 2001 (only for the News Of the World to reveal his Cambridge University private life in a kiss-and-tell just after he kisses hands).There is also an interesting chapter on the Benn-Healey deputy leadership election of 1981, which highlights the little-reported fact that had the abstentions been counted separately, and not disregarded, because of the vagaries of the Labour Party Electoral College, Tony Benn would have won. Perhaps American Presidents could be elected by this method.
As I now seem to be drifting back into the fictional world, I'll stay with American elections for my final choice, another what if, Philip Roth's The Plot against America, the premise of which rests on the isolationist Charles Lindbergh beating Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 election, and the consequent effects of his presidency on an ordinary jewish family (the Roths) in New Jersey. Concentration camps do not spring up all over America , but an Office of American Absorpton casts its shadow over the land. I thought that I had a criticism of the novel in the way that the political events are portrayed: it's almost as if they are spinning newspaper headlines interrupting the action in a black-and-white film, but I suppose this highlights the plight and powerlessness of those affected. The ending could appear a little contrived, as normality returns, after a bizarre series of events- it's almost as if Roth has bottled the chance to look further into the abyss.
Well, that's that for a while. If you're thinking that I need to say my penance for not having been here for a while, just think of me on the tube with about 5 lb of Proust to get through. |
