Morning folks. Boris Johnson, your absconding blogger, reporting for duty.
A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS
We went out to the cinema the other night, and all we could see was something
called the Interpreter, which imagined an assassination attempt on a Robert
Mugabe figure at the UN. It was interesting to see how Hollywood coped with this
theme, and how director Sydney Pollack tiptoed towards reality but funked it in
the end. We were told that the old dictator had once been a revolutionary hero,
feted in the west. We were shown the degradation of his regime, the corpses in
the football stadium. We were told that Nicole Kidman’s family had been killed
by a landmine, and we were given the tiniest of hints that it had been tough to
be a white inhabitant of this troubled country “in Africa’s south-central belt”.
But on the main point – the heart of the modern Zimbabwean tragedy – the film
was eloquently silent. Sydney Pollack did not have the nerve to address the
wholesale theft of white farmers’ land by Zanu-PF thugs. Why? Because the
vicious Mugabe land-grab is supported by most of black Africa; and even if
America makes ritual denunciations of Mugabe, it just would not have been
possible – or compatible with Hollywood’s PC values – for Pollack to make a film
upholding the right of white colonial settlers to their land. I’m not saying the
film was all bad: it was good to see a thriller about African politics. But it
was a cop-out.
Here we are in beautiful Whitchurch, canvassing and getting a generally excellent response. What mystifies me is the state of these opinion polls — how can Labour really be ahead, when I can’t find anyone going to vote Labour?
But then I’m out in the wilds of Oxfordshire – as they say in Apocalypse Now, I’m 75 clicks up the Nong River, and out of touch with base.
I have only one comment on the national campaign, and that follows a garbled radio report of what Charles Kennedy is supposed to have said about pulling British Troops out of Iraq. I may have misheard, but I can say from direct experience that a British withdrawal is the last thing the people of Iraq either want or need. For better or worse, we toppled their regime and transformed their country. It is our duty to see that through, and to restore security. That does not mean an indefinite commitment – and comparisons with Vietnam or Ulster are just absurd – but an immediate withdrawal is not on, and should not be the agenda for a serious prime ministerial candidate.
I am in a state of rage. It has just gone 7 pm and here I am at Westminster, having somehow got it in my head that now was the time to vote against ID cards on Third Reading, and what do I find but the vote has happened unexpectedly, with no warning, and I have missed my chance.
The other day a group of about 20 Tory MPs met to launch the Conservative Civil Liberties Group. I stuck my head round the door to see what was going on.
