I’ve had an odd recurring experience when reading the news from Britain over the last couple of months. The Brits so often seem to be dealing with momentous events (or at least splashier tabloid headlines than Canadians usually get to play with), but then repeatedly, those stories just ... fizzle.
I suppose that happens everywhere to a degree. Perhaps I am oversensitized to the phenomenon in Britain because I have been trailing along behind Tony Blair for so long, convinced over and over again that the latest of his appalling mistakes (and I'm being polite to call them that) is going to sink him for good, but they never do.
Just last Monday, for instance, I awoke to this thrilling headline in the Guardian: “Blair likely to quit if aides charged in loans inquiry.” Omigosh, I thought. It’s the Capone solution – you know, if you can’t get him for his real crimes (like aiding and abetting his good friend George W. Bush in subverting international order and starting a disastrous and criminal war in Iraq, not to mention chipping away at civil liberties at home), then funny business with the accounts will do. It’s the wrong reason (you doubt that honours have been up for sale for some generations?) and thus a bit of a disappointment, but for a day or so I was humming happily along, “oh, you can’t always git what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find ...”
But no. Through the week, the story fizzled. On Wednesday, Blair sidestepped a question in the Commons about whether he would indeed resign if a close aide were charged in the cash-for-honours scandal, and then flew off to one of the ego-stroking glam international stages he so loves, the World Economic Forum at Davos, where he gets to make all those high-minded legacy speeches about Africa and climate change and global justice that he has been peddling for several years now to absolutely no detectable effect. (Somalia update to come.)
We needn’t lose all hope. Police investigations of the cash-for-honours scandal continue; a second close aide has been reinterviewed “under caution” this week. As those who remember the magical evening of 21 November 1990 will recall, when British PMs go, they can go very fast. All it takes is a brief visit from the party elders and a quick review of the numbers. Excellent system, eh wot? (But what is taking them so bluidy long?)
And the soft-hearted among us have no need to worry about Tony. Tony will be ok.
The boss of a big private equity business told me last week that he had received an approach from a City grey eminence. "What your firm needs," urged this hopeful hustler, "is a seriously high-profile public figure up front, flying the flag for you. For £4m, we can get you Tony Blair."I disbelieve 50% of that story. Though I am sure the reported offer was made, Blair would not yet dare to authorise such an explicit advance in his name. But the proposal merely anticipated reality. A few months hence - or sooner if, as the Guardian reported yesterday, cash-for-honours charges against an aide prompt him to stand down early - he will be up there on the block, with an auctioneer demanding: "What am I offered for this dazzling ex-prime minister? Who will start me at £4m?"
Meanwhile, the hard-hearted among us may find consolation in George Galloway’s latest address to the Commons on his own government’s record on Iraq. Be sure to catch his closing condemnation of Blair in person (immediately ruled unparliamentary, of course, which is no doubt why Galloway saved his naming for a very quick ending).
Other kinds of fizzles:
It is fair and proper, no doubt, that criminal investigations of all kinds should go quiet after the first flurry of public attention. No surprise that there is no news yet from Suffolk about the suspect charged in the murder of six Ipswich women – in fact, it is good to know that the only recent news out of Ipswich is the soccer figures.
The investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, however, resurfaced as a continuing puzzle on Friday, when the Guardian reported that the British government are preparing to demand the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, a Russian businessman, on suspicion that he is Litvinenko’s mystery poisoner.
The immediate problem with pursuing Lugovoi is that the Russians refuse to do that, on constitutional grounds. Well, maybe they do; maybe they don’t. Maybe they would bend their constitutional guarantees to one of their own citizens for a quid pro quo: Britain would trade Boris Berezovsky, the Russian businessman who has been granted asylum in the UK and who has interesting connections to Litvinenko’s case, which clearly the British cannot and will not do.
Sources in the Russian prosecutor's office denied this yesterday. But pro-Kremlin Russian politicians suggested a quid pro quo in the Litvinenko affair was reasonable, and said they were baffled by Scotland Yard's one-sided demands."Currently the British side seems to be considering Lugovoi as main suspect in the case," said Alexei Mitrofanov, leader of the Liberal Democrat party faction, which supports Vladimir Putin, the president.
British officials in Moscow have tried to explain the nature of the judicial system in Britain, and the fact that detectives operate independently of political pressure.
The deeper problem, at least for amateurs following the story of Litvinenko’s murder, is that Lugovoi still looks like only one of a number of possible suspects. For a number of reasons this case looks to be so entangled in internal Russian politics, the international effects of internal Russian politics, internal Italian politics, the international arms trade, and gawd knows what else that it is hard to see it going anywhere very soon.
The trial of the alleged London Tube bombers of 21 July 2005 began two weeks ago. The testimony so far has been gripping – in this case at least, it was the criminals who fizzled in the first place, although they apparently came very close to replicating the horrors of the 7 July bombings, which killed 52 commuters as well as the 4 bombers. (The Guardian site carries almost daily updates of the trial testimony.)
The major criminal failure – much more than a fizzle -- in the investigation of the potential horror of 21 July occurred on 22 July 2005, when British police assaulted and murdered an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, in a Tube station. That story continues as well.
And for our final fizzle: who isn’t happy to hear that the execrable tabloid News of the World has run into more than a spot of bother? Guess how they did that. By violating the law and the privacy of other human beings for no greater purpose than to report to a panting public the condition of a prince’s knee tendon:
Goodman had a glittering reputation at the News of the World for scoop-getting, reputedly holding the paper's record for the highest number of consecutive front-page leads.But his thirst for inside information led him to break the law by hacking into private phone messages, and today earned him a four-month jail sentence.
Goodman's undoing resulted from the pursuit of comparatively low-grade tittle-tattle. The story that first aroused suspicion in the royal household that he had been tapping into phone messages appeared in the News of the World's Blackadder column on November 6 2005.
It told how Prince William had consulted doctors over a pulled knee tendon and had postponed a mountain rescue course - something known to very few people.
A week later the diary ran an item saying that Tom Bradby, ITV's former royal correspondent, had lent the prince some broadcasting equipment. The piece appeared a week before Bradby was due to meet William.
"We worked out that only he and I and two people incredibly close to him had actually known about it," said Mr Bradby, who is now political editor for ITN.
The royal household reported its suspicions to the police, and the inquiry was taken on by the counter-terrorism branch of Scotland Yard.
Jail time for two smarty-pants hacks. Editor’s resignation accepted. Press Complaints Commission inquiry initiated.
Do you ever wonder about the things that some people do to earn a lot of money in our world?
Stories and non-stories -
"I’ve had an odd recurring experience when reading the news from Britain over the last couple of months. The Brits so often seem to be dealing with momentous events (or at least splashier tabloid headlines than Canadians usually get to play with), but then repeatedly, those stories just ... fizzle"
The Guardian this weekend carried an interesting piece reporting on a survey commissioned by the German weekly Die Zeit. The study concludes: "It is a German view of a British press addicted to 'sensationalism, over-simplification and "emotionalisation"'. Research commissioned by Die Zeit, the country's leading weekly newspaper, finds that its Fleet Street counterparts are replacing reasoned analysis with emotive reporting, spattering news coverage with first-person accounts, and employing ever-more dramatic language."
Perhaps the "fizzle" is just that, a speck in some ass-editor's eye. An excuse to come up with an attention catching headline that may provide a few paragraphs of copy before it the story fates into its well deserved obscurity. Like our Sun chain in Canada.
Thanks for that reference, Croghan -- I hadn't seen the article about Die Zeit, but I certainly could have used it.
I must say, I would not accuse the Guardian or the Independent of those sins ('sensationalism, over-simplification and "emotionalisation"'), although it's true that the British tabloids are a lot rougher than most of what North Americans usually see. Not so sure about the Germans, mind you.
I still think that there is an odd wheel-spinning mood in the British press right now, which is probably mostly traceable to Tony's endless "legacy" year. Until he goes, so much remains in suspended animation.