'Hearts and Minds' by Oliver Letwin

Took me quite a few months of dipping in and out to read this book. It's quite a dry read; part memoir (Letwin is a former Conservative MP and minister), and part history of the Conservative party from the shift towards Monetarism/Thatcherism to the 2017 election, with reflections on what went well and wrong.

On the whole, Letwin comes across well; the book is clearly aimed at politics nerds, not the general public, and feels refreshingly honest, like a politician talking to another politician in private, without fear of losing reputation by saying the wrong thing. By the time of writing, Letwin had been sacked from the Cabinet by Theresa May, and so was no longer in the centre of government, but he had not yet rebelled against the government during the Brexit votes (which eventually led to him being expelled from the party).

The experience of reading this book was often frustrating, because while Letwin gave the impression of being a well-meaning and compassionate guy, he has been shaped by the frankly shocking amount of privilege he grew up with and has been surrounded with for his entire life.

When discussing 'The Intellectual Origins of Thatcherism', he remarks that the story is also his own intellectual origins, because his parents were well-connected rightwing economists with many influential friends in politics. His parents were friends with Milton Friedman; he shares an anecdote of the future Nobel laureate teaching him some free market economics when he was a child. This is all described very casually, as though having such wealthy and well-connected parents is standard; indeed, I gets the impression that for most of his social circle throughout his life, it probably is the norm.

Letwin describes how he got his first job in politics. Keith Joseph, then Education Secretary, was a friend of his parents. Joseph was round for dinner, and Letwin had recently finished university, and Joseph offered him a job at the Department for Education.

Inspirational.

Later, he transfers to the Policy Unit, and casually remarks that his new boss was another friend of his parents. This does not warrant reflection on his own lucky circumstances, or on the insular culture of Westminster politics.

He does, however, reflect on why free market policies have made many people's lives worse. Thatcherite ideas were thought up by a bunch of rich people whose blissful ignorance of what living in poverty was like meant that the actual lived reality of poor people was excluded from their economic modelling, which largely assumed that 'economic freedom' ('Free to Choose' is the title of a Friedman book) applied to everyone equally, conveniently ignoring how much poverty limits people's freedom and choices. Such economic beliefs, which assume equal freedom between individuals, therefore lead to the false narrative that poverty is due to individual choice and personal failings.

'The attachments of the party to free market theory had unnecessarily become a reason for placing far too little emphasis on social justice, and that this in turn gave the party the appearance of callousness.'

Later chapters of the book - which deal with Letwin's experience in government after 2010, are rather more tedious, with descriptions of a lot of bureaucracy, meetings, discussions, phone calls, showing how extremely tedious a lot of political work is.

While reflecting on the Coalition, Letwin remarks that he found himself having far more in common with the Lib Dems than those further right in the Conservative Party, highlighting that the two major parties are already coalitions of different groups - hence the ongoing Labour civil war, and how different Letwin feels compared to today's Conservative party (which Letwin was kicked out of), dominated as it now is by a different faction.

Overall, I found this an informative look at politics 'behind the scenes' from the refreshing (to me) perspective of a reflective Tory who means well but who has been shaped by, and whose worldview has therefore been limited by, a life of wealth and privilege.

'Panodrama' by Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon

 

I watched Tommy Robinson’s/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s ‘Panodrama’ documentary last night.

Wait. Don’t panic. Hear me out.

It’s a fascinating piece of filmmaking.

The story follows Robinson, fresh out of prison (in his mythology, he was imprisoned for doing nothing wrong except being an anti-establishment hero of the working class) worried about a planned BBC Panorama documentary about him, and coming up with a plan to bring it down, to expose ‘that it’s scripted, that they lie, that they clip, that they invent things, that they edit… the tactics they use to get the narrative they want.’

We are expected to trust him as an ordinary bloke fighting the establishment, and he is undoubtedly a charismatic figure: it is easy to see why he developed such a following and fanbase. His presentation style is charming, a relatable everyman, somewhat like a blend of Bradley Walsh and Dominic Littlewood.

The plan involves Lucy Brown, one of Robinson’s colleagues, agreeing to meet with Panorama journalist John Sweeney while secretly recording their conversation. They come up with the plan during a natural chat at Brown’s dinner table. A natural, unscripted chat between two ordinary people – with two cameras set up for shot/reverse shot, and don’t forget the off-camera lighting kit. The scene, while presented as natural, is inevitably partially scripted, perhaps a recreation of an actual chat they had, or a condensing of multiple conversations in different formats across days or weeks.

Brown’s meeting with Sweeney takes place at a pub, where a lot of alcohol is consumed – when paying the £220 bill, Sweeney brags that he is on expenses for the evening. It is fairly standard for journalists to use alcohol to loosen their sources’ lips – the boozy lunches of Private Eye journalists are especially notorious. Brown is in on the game, and is using the tactic back at Sweeney, who makes several off-colour jokes and comments throughout the evening, as he himself gets increasingly drunk.

After reviewing the secretly recorded footage, Robinson contacts Panorama and agrees to an interview at a location of his choosing. Unbeknownst to the Panorama crew, the location comes with a projector screen set up, ready to show clips from the secret recording. In the gloriously theatrical finale, Robinson turns the tables on Sweeney, revealing the secret recording and questioning him about media bias and his own inappropriate comments. Having exposed the bias and hypocrisy of the liberal mainstream media, the victorious Robinson walks out. It is a beautifully done piece of theatre.

That is the main arc, but a few smaller threads are worth mentioning. Robinson has heard that Hope Not Hate, what he calls ‘a far-left extremist organisation’ have been involved with the Panorama documentary. Robinson mentions that they describe themselves as antifascist with links to antifa, ‘an organisation that leading members of the American government have called to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.’

He meets someone whose ‘life was ruined’ by Hope Not Hate, despite him having ‘broke no law’. Tom Dupree, described in the lower third as a ‘Hope Not Hate Victim’, supposedly lost his job and his career because Hope Not Hate researchers got in touch with his employer about political opinions he had been sharing on social media about ‘the controversial stuff, immigration, Islam’. We do not get to see what his opinions and statements were: Dupree and Robinson simply reassure us that they were ‘not extremist’, ‘just speaking openly’, and ‘no hatred, just facts’. This would be far more convincing if we could see Dupree’s actual comments (and if Dupree didn’t have a strong ‘middle class white supremacist’ vibe about him), but alas that may have ruined the Innocent Victim narrative.

The crux of the Innocent Victim narrative is the point that Dupree ‘broke no law’, as though breaking the law is only reason someone should lose their job. The film conveniently omits mentioning any Diversity & Inclusion policies his employer might have had which Dupree’s comments might not have been in line with – never mind his employer’s understandable fear that Dupree’s public comments could bring the company into disrepute.

Another thread is the threats and blackmail which Robinson’s former colleagues have received from journalists. Colleagues show him threatening text messages supposedly received from journalists – others speak on the phone about such threats given in person, and even actual assault.

As part of the expose, Robinson and Brown use a website to fake a threatening text message – it appears to be from Robinson’s phone, threatening violence on Brown if she gets involved with Panorama, but we see that it was sent via text-faking website and Brown herself typed it out. The purpose of this is to show how easy such things are to fake, and how the journalists will believe it because it is part of the narrative they want to tell.

In the theatrical finale, Robinson relays these allegations of abuse and shows the threatening texts to Sweeney, while acknowledging that they are not from him but are another example of media hostility and corruption. Later on, after Robinson has questioned Sweeney over his many drunken comments, Sweeney, clearly intending it as a retaliatory ‘Gotcha!’ moment, brandishes a print-out of threatening text faked earlier, to which Tommy laughs and triumphantly declares that the text is fake and never came from his phone, all the while glancing at the camera in a ‘I told you so’ way.

Sweeney persists with the questioning, not realising how thoroughly he has been caught out. Robinson points out that the BBC would have aired the fake text uncritically – Sweeney responds that they would give him the right to reply. Robinson points out that the allegation would stick in people’s minds far more strongly than his denial.

And this is where the true magic of film comes into focus. Robinson showing how easy it is to fake texts means that the threatening texts from journalists immediately become suspicious – were these faked too? When Robinson asks Sweeney about the abuse his colleagues have received from journalists, Sweeney says he has heard the allegations but doesn’t know if they’re true etc etc, but Sweeney’s mumbled, nervous, rambling reply is not what sticks to the viewers head. The allegation sticks in the viewer’s mind more strongly than the suggestion that it might be fake.

Throughout the film, Robinson claims he is constantly clipped out of context by the media. And then he does this same thing against Sweeney, clipping choice sentences out of the hours-long conversation with Brown, and questioning him on it. It must be admitted that many of these lines, including use of the slur ‘woofter’ and Sweeney saying he finds it funny to annoy Greek people by speaking Turkish to them, would not be improved by context.

At one point, Sweeney gets frustrated and angrily declares that he is the journalist and he should be the one asking questions – it comes across as an entitled tantrum, as he gets a taste of his own medicine. It is very satisfying seeing Sweeney squirm and be exposed as a hypocrite; the underdog narrative is extremely well crafted and you can’t help but cheer on.

In a particularly beautiful moment, Robinson refers to Sweeney as a member of the Establishment, to which Sweeney responds that he is not a member of the Establishment and please do not say that he is. In response, Robinson plays a clip of Sweeney saying ‘people like us, in the Establishment’. Beautiful.

The film is many things: it is an expose of media manipulation techniques, but it is also itself a case study in using those techniques to construct a one sided narrative: it’s scripted, it lies, it edits, it clips, it invents things; Robinson uses these tactics to get the narrative he wants.

By focusing on media manipulation techniques, and then using them itself, the film throws everything into question. How can anything be trusted? When things are so easy to fake, how can we know what is real in our increasingly media-saturated world?

Very unintentionally, the film becomes reminiscent of the works of Philip K Dick and Christopher Priest. Robinson is our unreliable narrator; fakery and unreality are everywhere and nothing is to be trusted. Part of me was hoping for a post-credits scene showing Robinson playing with an origami unicorn.

'A Very British Coup' by Chris Mullin

This was republished a few years ago with the tagline 'the novel that foretold the rise of Corbyn': it accurately predicted the horror and outrage that many in the political class felt against a genuinely leftwing Labour leader.

The sections dealing with ruthless smear campaigns in the press are especially prescient; indeed, the fictional scenario is arguably calmer than reality, if you think back to how ridiculously hyperbolic the actual coverage of Corbyn often was, which drowned out legitimate and good faith criticisms of his leadership.

As the novel progresses, the specifics of the story become more far-fetched, especially those that lead to the government's inevitable downfall, even if the atmosphere remains believable. The weak characterisation also makes the novel rather shallow: the rightwing characters are all scheming villains in sharp contrast to the righteous leftwingers.

A couple of chapters cover strike action by a union of power workers during winter; this reads very much like the author working over his frustration at the Winter of Discontent (1979). The strike organising union boss is characterised as an establishment figure working with the CIA to bring down Labour.

The most outrageously paranoid and farfetched sentence states that the unions hadn't gone on strike during 10 years of Tory rule (the novel was published in 1982, the story starts in 1989), but as soon as a leftwing Labour government came to power, they were up for striking again to bring down the government.

This is silly enough with the context that the 1974 miner's strike had led to the Conservatives losing power. With the later context of the miner's strike during the Thatcher years, it becomes ridiculous.

A good novel but not a great one. I listened to the audio version - the narrator clearly had an absolute blast doing all the voices, which added a lot to the experience of the story.