Okay, this is just hearsay, but it suggests what and who’s responsible for the Tory strategy of running away from interviews. And that person is their election strategist, Linton Crosby.

Thursday evening I put up a little piece commenting on the very low profile adopted by Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Tories had been keeping him well away from the cameras and the microphones after he had massively put his foot in his mouth about the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire on LBC radio. Mogg was due to appear at a hustings in Midsomer Norton, but considering his record of not appearing in public, there was speculation that he wouldn’t.

Of course, Mogg isn’t alone in his reluctance to talk to the media. Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog, posted a couple of remarks about other Tory candidates also running away. Like the one for Colne Valley, who apparently declared that he avoids meetings with a left-wing bias. The site reporting this is

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/jason-mccartney-explains-hasnt-attended-17364450.

But be warned! It’s behind a paywall.

And the Sidmouth Herald also reported that a Tory down there had also pulled out of a hustings.

https://www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/conservative-candidate-pulls-out-of-hustings-1-6406694

And last Wednesday Mike also reported how the Tory candidate for Peterborough, Paul Bristow, ran away from Channel 4. They wanted to ask him about a possible threat from Brexit, but this was obviously too much for the Tory’s delicate constitution.

Terrified Tories are running from media scrutiny

The Russians say that a fish rots from the head down, and that’s certainly true of the Tories. They only seem to be following the lead of their chief, our unfunny comedy prime minister, Boorish Boris Johnson. Johnson runs away from interviews at a rate of knots. he has signally failed to turn up to be mauled by Andrew Neil and ducked out of Channel 4’s climate debate. And to think that the Tories had the gall to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of being chicken.

I was talking to a friend about this, and he remarked that it’s how the parties campaign in Australia. They don’t give interviews, just keep their heads down and smear each other. I don’t know if it’s correct, but if it is, it’s something that the Tories have decided to import over here. And the person most likely to be responsible for it is Linton Crosby. Before he become the Tories’ electoral strategist under Tweezer, he was one of the major electoral strategists for their equivalent Down Under. Now it seems that after destroying proper democratic debate there, he’s importing the same policy of silence and smear here.

But what does it say about the Tories’ style of government, that they just lie and smear their opponents from running away from real scrutiny and honest debate themselves? Would you trust such dishonest cowards in government?

Mike over at Vox Political has been putting up a number of articles about how publicity-shy various Tory candidates are. Some of them are so wary of actually talking to the media that they’ve actually been spotted running away from them and members of the public. Yesterday he put up a video from EvolvePolitics about the Tory candidate for Peterborough, Paul Bristow, who had gone into self-imposed media silence. Channel 4 news had been looking for him to get an interview about what he felt about the challenge from a rival candidate for the Brexit Party. But, like Jo Swinson for the Remain campaign during the EU referendum, he was nowhere to be seen. The journo ended up waiting for him outside his house after their attempts to contact him about arranging an interview got absolutely nowhere. Eventually he turned up, and when they ran towards him he started closing the door, claiming that he couldn’t speak to them because he had a meeting. He told them to phone or email his office. The hack told him they had, and got through to one of the gentlemen with him, but had got nowhere. But the door closed, and so another Tory remained silent. Safe from media scrutiny.

Terrified Tories are running from media scrutiny

Like the current leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Mogg was due to appear at a hustings in Midsomer Norton at 7.00 O’Clock this evening. Points West, the local news programme for the Bristol, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire area, was also down there hoping to catch him when they were on air at 6.30. But he hadn’t shown up. It seems Mogg has also been told told to keep his head down by the Tory party. He hasn’t given an interview for a month since he opened his mouth on LBC and made his highly ill-advised comments about the victims of the Grenfell fire. The programme said that the Tories had stated he hadn’t given interviews and would not give any for the next month. The Beeb’s journo then did a vox pop of three members of the public, who had turned up for the hustings. They were not impressed with Mogg’s avoidance of public and media scrutiny. A young woman said that it showed a disrespect for the public. An older man said that he wasn’t surprised Mogg wasn’t talking after his comments about Grenfell. They were disgraceful! He also spoke to the candidates for the other parties – the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour, who were hoping to tackle Mogg at the hustings. And they had the same view of Mogg as the ordinary citizens the Beeb had just interviewed. Their man in Midsomer Norton ended that part of the programme by saying that the Tories had assured them that Mogg would be at the hustings, and they’d give an update to the story at a later bulletin.

This tells you all about the high confidence the Tories have in their candidates. They really don’t want anyone interviewing them, asking them any awkward questions. And they’re doing their best to run away from the cameras and microphones as fast as their legs can carry them. Mind you, with people having written ‘Get Mogg Out’ on the top of a slag heap near Midsomer Norton earlier today, perhaps it’s unsurprising that Mogg was in no hurry to get to the hustings there.

But the peeps on the programme were right. The behaviour of Mogg and his fellow Tory candidates trying to keep themselves out of the media, so they don’t put their feet in it, does show a basic contempt for the voting public. As well as their hypocrisy. After all, it wasn’t that long ago they were calling Corbyn ‘chicken’.

Vladimir Firsoff was a British astronomer and the author of a series of books, not just on space and spaceflight, but also on skiing and travel. He was a staunch advocate of space exploration. At the end of his 1964 book, Exploring the Planets (London: Sidgwick & Jackson) he presents a rather unusual argument for it. He criticises the scepticism of leading astronomers of his time towards space exploration. This was after the Astronomer Royal of the time had declared that the possibility of building a vehicle that could leave the Earth’s atmosphere and enter space was ‘utter bilge’. He points out that the technology involved presented few problems, but that ordinary people had been influenced by the astronomers’ scepticism, and that there are more pressing problems on Earth. Against this he argued that humanity needed danger, excitement and sacrifice, the emotional stimulation that came from war. Space exploration could provide this and so serve as a positive alternative, a beneficial channel for these deep psychological needs. Firsoff wrote

The traditional planetary astronomy has exhausted its resources. No significant advance is possible without escape beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. The orbital observatories to come will reveal much that is now hidden about the other planets. Space travel is a short historical step ahead. The basic technical problems have been solved, and the consummation of this ancient dream is only a matter of a little effort, experiment and technical refinement. When Bleriot flew the Channel the Atlantic had already been spanned by air lines. And so today we have already landed on Mars – even Triton and Pluto have been reached.

But do we really like to have our dreams come true?

Possibly that happy extrovert the technologist has no misgivings. He sees the Solar System as an enlargement of his scope of action, and has even suggested preceding a descent on Mars by dropping a few bombs, “to study the surface” (this suggestion was widely reported in the press). Yet the astronomer does not relish the prospect of leaving his ivory tower to become a man of action. He is troubled by this unfamiliar part, and a small voice at the back of his mind whispers insidiously that his cherished theories and predictions may, after all, be false. The dislike of space travel is psychologically complex, but there is no mistaking its intensity among the profession.

The general public shares these enthusiasms  and apprehensions, more often than not without any clear reasons why. The Press (with a very capital P) feeds them with predigested mental pulp about what those ‘wonderful people’ the scientists have said or done (and not all scientists are 12 feet tall). At the same time the scientist is a ‘clever man’, and the ‘clever man’ is traditionally either a crank or a scoundrel, and why not both? Whatever we do not understand we must hate.

Of such promptings the fabric of public opinion is woven into varied patterns.

“Space flight is too expensive. We can’t afford it”… “What is the point of putting a man on the Moon? It is only a lifeless desert.”… “We must feed the backward nations, finance cancer research” (= in practice “buy a new TV set and a new care”)…

Wars are even more expensive and hugely destructive, and cars kill more people than cancer and famine put together.

And yet before 1939 Britain ruled half the world, her coffers were stuffed with gold, she also had 5 million on the dole, slums, an inadequate system of education, poverty and dejection. Came a long and terrible war, a fearful squandering of resources, the Empire was lost, and in the end of it it all the people “had never had it so good”, which for all the facility of such catch-phrases is basically true. Not in Britain alone either-look at West Germany, look at the U.S.S.R.! One half of the country devastated, cities razed to the ground, 30 million dead. BHut in Russia, too, the “people had never had it so good”.

In terms of ‘sound economics’ this does not make any sense. 

The reason is simply: ‘sound economics’ is a fraud, because Man is not an economic animal, or is so only to an extent. He needs danger, struggle, sacrifice, fear, loss, even death, to release his dormant energies, to find true companionship, and-oddly-to attain the transient condition of happiness … among or after the storm.

That German soldier who had scribbled on the wall of his hut: “Nie wieder Krieg heisst nie wieder Sieg, heisst nie wieder frei, heisst Sklaverie” (No more war means no more victory, means never free, means slavery) was a simple soul and he may have survived long enough to regret his enthusiasms among the horrors that followed. Yet the idea, distorted as it was, contained a germ of truth. For heroic endeavour, which the past enshrined as martial valour, is as much a necessity as food and drink. We must have something great to live for.

Hitler’s ‘endeavour’ was diabolical in conception and in final count idiotic, but it cannot be denied that it released prodigious energies both in Germany and among her opponents, and we are still living on the proceeds of this psychological capital.

What we need is a noble uplifting endeavour, and even if we cannot all take direct part in it, we can yet share in it through the newspapers, radio and television, as we did, say, in the epic rescue operation during the Langede mining disaster. It became a presence, everybody’s business-and I doubt if it paid in terms of £ s.d…

You will have guessed what I am going to say.

Mankind needs space flight. Let us have space ships instead of bombers, orbital stations instead of ‘nuclear devices’. The glory of this great venture could do away with war, juvenile delinquency and bank raids. It could be cheap at the price.

It is a fallacy to imagine that money spend on developing spaceflight is lost to the nation; it is only redistributed within it, and it is much better to redistribute it in the form of real wages than in unemployment relief. Besides, real wealth is not in a ledger; it is the work and the willingness to do it.

Yet if we go into space, let us do so humbly, in the spirit of cosmic piety. We know very little. We are face to face with the great unknown and gave no right to assume that we are alone in the Solar System.

No bombs on Mars, please.

For all that they are well meant and were probably true at the time, his arguments are now very dated. I think now that the majority of astronomers are probably enthusiasts for space flight and space exploration, although not all of them by any means are advocates for crewed space exploration. The Hubble Space Telescope and its successors have opened up vast and exciting new vistas and new discoveries on the universe. But astronomers are still using and building conventional observatories on Earth. Despite the vast sums given to the space programme during the ‘Space Race’, it did not solve the problems of crime or juvenile delinquency. And it was resented because of the exclusion of women and people of colour. Martin Luther King led a march of his Poor Peoples’ Party to the NASA launch site to protest against the way money was being wasted, as he saw it, on sending White men to the Moon instead of lifting the poor – mainly Black, but certainly including Whites – out of poverty. And as well as being enthused and inspired by the Moon landings, people also grew bored. Hence the early cancellation of the programme.

And people also have a right to better healthcare, an end to famine and a cure for cancer. Just as it’s also not wrong for them to want better TVs and cars.

But this isn’t an either/or situation. Some of the technology used in the development of space travel and research has also led to breakthroughs in other areas of science and medicine. Satellites, for example, are now used so much in weather forecasting that they’re simply accepted as part of the meteorologists’ tools.

But I agree with Firsoff in that space is an arena for positive adventure, struggle and heroism, and that it should be humanity’s proper outlet for these urges, rather than war and aggression. I think the problem is that space travel has yet to take off really, and involve the larger numbers of people in the exploration and colonisation space needed to make it have an obvious, conspicuous impact on everyone’s lives. There is massive public interest in space and space exploration, as shown by Prof. Brian Cox’s TV series and touring show, but I think that to have the impact Virsoff wanted people would have to feel that space was being opened up to ordinary people, or at least a wider section of the population than the elite scientists and engineers that now enjoy the privilege of ascending into Low Earth Orbit. And that means bases on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere, and the industrialisation of space.

But I think with the interest shown in the commercial exploitation of space by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, that might be coming. And I certainly hope, with Firsoff, that this does provide a proper avenue for the human need for danger and adventure, rather than more war and violence.

Mike has put up a very informative piece contradicting today’s latest piece of media propaganda about Tory popularity. According to today’s I and a number of other papers, a polling company has predicted that the Tories will get a 68 seat majority in the Commons at the coming election. This apparently comes from a company that got the result of the 2017 election right.

But Mike notes that the information used as the basis for the poll is dated. And an analysis of the Tories election strategy by Dr Moderate has shown that they moved from offence to defence. They’ve shifted from targeting Labour seats with large majorities to ultra-marginals and trying to defend Tory seats. And Mike’s article also notes that Johnson’s own behaviour hardly demonstrates the calm confidence with which their supporters are trying to impress us. Johnson is showing his made of the kind of mettle Tweezer was: he’s running scared, and running away from tough interviews. Andrew Neil interviewed the Labour leader last week, and was supposed to give Boris the same kind of grilling he dished out to Corbyn. But this ain’t happening, folks. Johnson has scarpered. He is also not going to appear on Channel 4’s election leaders’ debate today on the climate crisis. And he isn’t going to attend the Beeb’s 7-way leaders’ debate tomorrow, though Corbyn won’t either.

Mike comments

It seems the cowardly Johnson is afraid that he may face questioning over his own sexism, racism and attempts to spread Islamophobia, the many lies he has told – including to the Queen, and perhaps about his alleged financial connections with Russian money and with hedge fund bosses who apparently supported his bid to become Tory leader in return for a “no deal” Brexit.

It seems Boris was originally going to be represented at the debate by Dominic Raab. But Raab isn’t going to be there. He’s been replaced instead by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak. Raab has some questions to answer himself, as he deliberately excluded the family of Harry Dunn, the teenager allegedly killed by Anne Sacoolas at a constituency hustings.

And the polls over the past few weeks have also been all over the place. For example, on Monday, 25th November 2019, the I carried a story by their political editor, Nigel Morris, that the Observer had published a poll at the weekend stating that the Tories had a 19 point lead over Labour. Their popularity was at 47 per cent, while Labours was at 28 per cent. Other polls, the article said, had given the Tories leads of 13, 12, 11, and 10 points. And the article opened by claiming that polls showed that the Conservatives had an average lead of 12-13 points.

Which is interesting, as I seem to remember that a week before that, the papers, including the I, had been yelling that the Tories had a 20 point lead.  

And the Tory lead in the polls seems to have fallen still further. The following day, Tuesday, 26th November 2019, another article by Morris revealed that after the publication of the Labour manifesto the Tories’ lead fell to just 7 points. The new poll findings placed the Tories on 41 per cent and Labour on 34 per cent.

And Dr Moderate in his Twitter analysis has noted that Labour’s polling has increased by 4.3 per cent. This is despite the Tories launching their own manifesto and trying to revive the anti-Semitism smear campaign.

Mike concludes his article with

Support for Labour is increasing day by day and Tory attempts to stop it have failed.

But the Tory-supporting media, including the BBC, are telling you the opposite at a time when the law says they must be impartial.

Never mind the polls – the Tories are terrified and Boris Johnson is running away from scrutiny

Quite. The trend for Labour in the polls is upward. And the Tory press and media are terrified of people being inspired by it.