Labour moans about smears but it surely produced the nastiest election movie
I have still never got over the nastiest political broadcast I have ever seen in a free country. I watched it by accident, as I flopped down in front of the TV after a long day on the 1997 campaign trail.
The lush Elgar music for Land Of Hope And Glory played throughout. Scenes from a Tory conference were shown, speeded up or slowed down to leave Cabinet Ministers with their mouths hanging open stupidly. The technique could be used to make anyone look foolish or even evil.
This wasn’t criticism, or even mockery. It was hatred and contempt. As the music slowed, the scene switched to a dark and dingy hospital with patients in corridors. There were cruel shots of an old people’s home. Then we went back to the Tories at their conference, grinning away as if they were pleased by such things.
Then a dark street with a mugging taking place. Then some glum-looking children in a crowded classroom. As all this misery unrolled, subtitles asserted that all this was the Tories’ fault. Well, some of it must have been after 18 years in office. But you could have made the same film in 2010, after 13 years of Labour.
Labour’s 1997 political broadcast wasn’t criticism, or even mockery. It was hatred and contempt, writes Peter Hitchens
The lush Elgar music for Land Of Hope And Glory played throughout the political broadcast
As the music slowed, the scene switched to a dark and dingy hospital with patients in corridors
As all this misery unrolled, subtitles asserted that all this was the Tories’ fault
It was the subtitles which really astounded me. They went a lot further. The one that made me almost leap from my seat stated that the Tories would ‘abolish the state pension’. Amid the vague propaganda smears, this was a specific, checkable assertion. And it was a flat lie.
That night I just felt a great foreboding. This was not British politics as I had known it all my life. This was hard, almost Communist stuff, indifferent to the truth and filled with actual loathing of the other side.
I recalled a warning I’d had a few weeks before from a senior Blair adviser, my old friend Philip Bassett. Philip told me, as the campaign began and he left journalism to go and toil for New Labour, that I had ‘no idea how extensive the Blair project was’. Indeed, I did not, though it was dawning on me fast.
I offer two lessons from this. Ignore any Labour complaints about alleged dishonesty by others. They have absolutely no scruples, either about telling lies or about concealing the truth about themselves, as they are now doing.
My guess is that Sir Keir Starmer was slow to challenge Rishi Sunak’s wobbly claims about Labour tax schemes because he was scared the Tories had actually got their hands on his real secret plans.
Since 1997, Labour has been a different kind of party from what it once was, It is a party which does not really think its opponents have the right to exist.
Its own poison broadcast claimed of the Tories on April 21, 1997: ‘Imagine what would happen if the Tories got in again. They’d do as they pleased. And nothing could stop them.’
But they were really talking about themselves. Don’t risk a repeat of 1997.
We couldn’t cope without France, that sweet foe
I ought to be angry that the French demanded to see the passports of British paratroopers marking the D-Day anniversary in Normandy. If ever there was a moment to stretch a point, this was surely it.
It’s not as if the French don’t look the other way when it comes to their own affairs. The late Lord (Nigel) Lawson used to joke that he liked living in France because the silly bureaucratic pettifogging of the European Union did not seem to apply there.
By contrast, we used to enforce EU rules rigidly – and in some cases still do. But actually it just makes me laugh, as do plans for the French to try to be more polite to British tourists. Please don’t do it.
The French demanded to see the passports of British paratroopers marking the D-Day anniversary in Normandy
One of the many reasons I love visiting France is that I enjoy the way they resent us. They rage inwardly when we mangle their lovely language. They are affronted as we barge into their shops and cafes without first saying ‘Bonjour!’, a grave breach of manners to them.
They’re appalled by our taste in food and (with reason) by the way we bring up our children. Yet it’s one of the few countries in the world which still takes us seriously, thanks to our centuries of war and rivalry. Waterloo, Trafalgar and our role in the burning of Joan of Arc are all fresh in their memories, as they aren’t in ours.
They also remember that they, not we, won the Hundred Years War. What would we do without them, that sweet enemy?
Our relationship is like a 50-year marriage whose bickering spouses would be desolated if the quarrelling ever stopped. Whoever devised the passport check for the paratroopers deserves to join the Legion d’honneur. Such an ingenious tease.
Starmer thinks we’re here to serve the NHS
The most significant moment so far in the election is Sir Keir Starmer’s declaration that he will not resort to private medicine. This is even if a close family member is suffering in a long NHS queue.
Many don’t believe him. I do. Because, as I have been trying to explain for some time now, Sir Keir is a dogmatic revolutionary, not a normal politician.
His formative years were spent as a very hard Leftist indeed, active and fierce. He has not changed that much – this also explains his problem over women having penises.
Sir Keir Starmer’s declaration that he will not resort to private medicine is a statement that is close to madness for most of us, writes Peter Hitchens
For most of us, Sir Keir’s statement is close to madness. It makes no sense. For a start, it is not as if we don’t pay for the NHS. They don’t work for nothing. Indeed, Sir Keir, as a high earner, pays more for it than most. So what’s the problem about paying a private doctor?
But NHS-worship, especially on the militant Left, is a sort of religion and so does not need to make sense.
The grim irony here is that if the Left ever get full control of this country, the socialist elite will have excellent medical care, which they will pretend is just like everyone else’s.
They already pretend that the exceptional state schools they send their children to (almost always in costly secluded catchment areas) are normal comprehensives.
