David Miliband is an able politician, tipped as Gordon Brown's deputy. But he needs to watch his analogies. In his recent Scarman lecture there is an odd passage in which he compares Norman Tebbit's famous "cricket test" with the Dreyfuss affair in France. Tebbit may have been over-assimilationist in hoping that immigrants would show their new national loyalty by backing the English cricket team. But can that really compare with the Dreyfuss affair—a high point of French antisemitism in which a Jewish officer was falsely accused of treason and imprisoned for years? Surely his French accusers wanted Dreyfuss excluded from the French team.
Does Canada blaze the trail?
An ageing, uncharismatic finance minister who expects to inherit the job of prime minister; an established centre-left party which has been in power for over a decade and no longer excites; a young Tory challenger who tacks leftward to beat back the fear of conservative nastiness among middle-class voters and the media; the prospect of a hung parliament. Sound familiar? Of course. This describes the situation in Canada before Stephen Harper's narrow Conservative victory over Paul Martin in the election in January. Beyond the British parallel, the more serious point is the long-standing shift towards social liberalism in the politics of many western societies. The political scientist Ronald Inglehart developed the concept of "postmaterialism" in the 1980s to describe this phenomenon. At the time, many were distracted by the neoclassical economic revolutions of Thatcher and Reagan. But the trends spotted by Inglehart slowly emerged. Only in America, where evangelical Protestants' fertility countered the liberal trend, were things different. Today, those born after 1949 dominate the media and form a majority of the western electorate. All conservative parties must bend to their wishes if they hope to be elected. Much less clear is what Gordon Brown can do to avoid Martin's fate.
Americans are better at fibs
The list of US falsifiers of fact has been lengthening in recent times, from the Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair scandals in the press to the latest explosion of part-invented memoirs (James Frey) and literary personas (JT Leroy). The New York Times has been apologising, Oprah Winfrey has been making pleas for "the truth" and publishers have been excoriated for failing to check authors' accounts. The journalistic response here in Britain tends to be a shrug, and a snort about how the NYT takes itself too seriously. But perhaps we should take ourselves more seriously. There are few arguments over the finer points of accuracy in the British press because our papers don't check facts properly and our publishers don't edit seriously. Now the US is again taking the lead with the launch of Plagiary, a journal of "cross-disciplinary studies in plagiarism, fabrication and falsification." Launched by John P Lesko (an expert on fibs and pilferings), its international editorial board includes Denis Dutton, editor of the popular website Arts & Letters Daily. Perhaps it's an idea for Oxford's Institute for the Study of Journalism, launching in September (for more details see last month's Prospect).
Competition
Labour rebels are sniffing blood. Their failure to defeat the government over the terrorism bill means that all eyes are now on the education bill, which has its second reading in mid-March. All of which seems a perfect opportunity for us to remind readers of our Christmas competition, now extended, to guess the number of votes by which the government will win (or lose) the division. Email —closest guess wins the sixth season of The West Wing on DVD.
Bank of Britain
Gordon Brown's suggestion of a "Britain day" has been unfairly mocked. But surely Gordon has, close to hand, another and rather simpler means of raising the salience of Britain. Why not order Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, to change the bank's name to the Bank of Britain? Why should one of Britain's most admired institutions (see p50) be linked only to England? And isn't it time the Celtic nations got to occupy some of the more senior posts at the Bank of Britain?
Euroscepticism in Hampstead
The Hampstead Theatre might be expected to be a second home for EU-enthusiasts, but for the past few weeks a gloomy play about Euro-idealism turned sour—Tim Luscombe's Schuman Plan—has been packing them in. One member of the audience who was not impressed was Reijo Kemppinen, the Finnish head of the EU commission office in London. "The script is hopelessly biased and Luscombe leans heavily on all the usual stereotypes," he complains.
