Saturday, May 19, 2007

Crying for votes?

The following interview between presenter, Eddie Mair, and journalist and former Conservative MP, Matthew Parris, was broadcast on the PM programme on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, May 17, 2007 (my transcript from the audio recording; my emphasis):
Matthew Parris: This wasn't sombre: it was fake; it was absolutely ghastly; it was vile; it was loathsome; it was really toe-curling. Why do MPs do this kind of thing? They're getting worse and worse! They all come out in red AIDS ribbons, then they all come out in pink "cancer awareness" ribbons, and they start wearing their red poppies about four months before Remembrance Day - it's all completely false.

Eddie Mair: Don't they care?

Parris: Some may care, some may not care. It's nothing to do with caring. It's because they want to live like the common people, they want to feel like the common people, they want to be in touch with the common people, and they read the common newspapers and they decide that this is what the common people feel, and they get all caught up with it, and it's all to do with trying to associate themselves with the common herd, and they're not part of it: they're politicians.

Mair: Is the next step along from the argument you're making that, in fact, they are, in some way, just looking for our votes?

Parris: I don't think it's as crude as people thinking, "Ha, ha, ha! I don't really care about little Maddy, but I'm going to wear a yellow ribbon 'cause it'll get me votes." I think it's a matter of thinking, "Ah, this is the spirit of the times, this is the Zeitgeist, this is what everyone feels, this is what we're all feeling, this is what I feel," and, by then, they probably believe it. But there's something hollow about it all. Tony Blair hasn't helped by starting to reel off the names of soldiers killed in action at Prime Minister's Questions - can you imagine Churchill doing that?

Mair: Isn't he doing that because, well, I don't know why he's doing it but, if he didn't do it, wouldn't he be accused of ignoring, or forgetting, the soldiers, as he has been in the past?

Parris: He certainly wouldn't be accused of ignoring soldiers by not reading their names out in the House of Commons, because it never was done before. He started it and, I suppose, part of his motivation is genuine. It does also make it rather harder for the Leader of the Opposition to chip in with any kind of aggressive remark when the Prime Minister has just remembered the death of a soldier.

Mair: What about Gordon Brown today, having a meeting with some of the missing girl's relatives?

Parris: Oh, I don't know... you feel so sorry for the relatives and, of course, you feel so sorry for the parents and, of course, on one level, this level of public and media grief is, I suppose, a good thing. Yet there is something disgusting about it and there is something disgusting about politicians wanting to tap into it. I think a little bit of dignity, a little bit of reserve, a little bit of distance, except perhaps for the constituency MP - that's a matter for them.
It's rare I hear or read a piece like that and agree so profoundly and exactly with the sentiments of the interviewee. I can't stand the way some MPs carry jet packs around with them so that they can get onto any passing bandwagon no matter how high it's already piled with other MPs, journalists and "celebrities". (Yes, that word does demand quotation marks.) I wish they'd keep their comments to something like, "My sympathies are with the family but I feel that this is a private matter for them, so I will not comment any further." At the risk of sounding excessively common: as if!

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