Yet another attack-dog performance by Humphrys against poor Jack Straw on Today this morning. Surely it's reached the point of diminishing returns by now? On the news bulletin at 9 an excerpt from the inquisition interview was played in which Humphrys got the last word: in other words the journalist had become the story. He could hardly have been more partisan without wearing a yellow rosette, I'm assuming he doesn't, perhaps it's just that being on radio we can't see it. The problem, for the nth time, is not that he goes after government ministers: the problem is that he wouldn't dream of going after Menzies Campbell remotely as hard. But that theme is one these good people can take up.
The wider problem is that Humphrys plainly has no capability for sympathetic understanding of his ideological opponents. I remember once saying to a political science class that no politician should be trusted who hasn't read and understood and reflected on both Burke - the Reflections, say - and Paine, say the Rights of Man. That was hyperbole, of course. But the point should be obvious enough. Is it true to think that the average politician, the average blogger, and (above all) the average journalist has never done anything of the kind? Or is that unfair? What is clear enough is that people who have done this kind of mental work are invariably better writers than the party-line hacks. (Orwell, inevitably, made the same point long ago.) Look at this, for instance, from SIAW, atheists (and Marxists) to a wo/man, or this.
None of this implies wishy-washiness. It doesn't even imply a centrist or moderate or non-partisan position in politics etc. My touchstone here is the historian Macaulay, who was also an active politician, a very partisan Whig, strongly identified with Protestantism, England and the British Empire (in no particular order). His writings are nonetheless full of generous tributes to the enemies of England, to French soldiers, to decent Tories, to good Roman Catholics, and many others. His History of England is unapologetically pro-Whig and pro-William of Orange: Macaulay unequivocally identifies the Revolution of 1688 as the origin of British greatness. Much of the four volumes is taken up with description and discussion of the villainy and stupidity of the Jacobites, the enemies of the Revolution.
And then he writes this:
A Jacobite's Epitaph
TO my true king I offer'd free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,
Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I ask'd, an early grave.
O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
Tune me back in to Today when Humphrys expresses anything like that level of insight.