Interpreting | 2009.11.02
Unanswered question time | Peter Preston
In a value-free world, it\'s no surprise there is so little agreement on who won the BNP debate
This Mr Fox is either fantastic, or a mangy beast. He comes loaded with stars in the Guardian ("whip-smart and very funny") and similarly garlanded by the Times ("a brush with greatness"). But Chris Tookey in the Mail dumps one of his no-star turkeys outside Foxy\'s lair – "weirdly over-praised ... complacent, self-congratulatory whimsy". You pays your money, you takes your choice. The truth here lies somewhere between brilliance and boredom. And it will come round to Nick Griffin in a moment.
My old English master at school, Geoffrey Palmer, lately released from Cambridge University and the spell of FR Leavis , spent many dogged hours teaching us that there are positive and universal standards in the arts. You compile a list of necessary qualities. You measure Virginia Woolf (or Roald Dahl ) against them. You tick metaphorical boxes and come up with a result. This book is a masterpiece beyond peradventure. Or it\'s not.
Otherwise, Mr Palmer declared, there are no standards, and art – literature, theatre, paintings, films – is just a succession of subjective fads. Forget truth. The critics are just making it up as they go along. Surely we can do better?
But, of course, we don\'t. Johnny Mad Dog is either "one of the best films of the year ... a small, uncompromising masterpiece" (Chris Tookey) or a two-star disappointment "with an odd whiff of postcolonial bongo-bongo about it" ( the Times ). And Nicky Mad Dog was either "repugnant, slippery and exposed as an empty vessel" (Daily Mail ) or a pantomime "ogre" in a show where "Jack Straw came out the biggest loser" (the um! Mail again ). And, to be fair, no paper – this one included – delivered anything you could call a definitive view on who won, who lost and who will care about Question Time 15 days (or 15 minutes) down the track.
You turned on the set knowing what you thought to begin with. You turned it off an hour later with your assumptions confirmed. Worse yet – because the BBC lauds impartiality above all other virtues – its own news bulletins, trying to span the chasm of opinion between turkey and tiger, actually managed to deliver no real verdict at all. Impartiality didn\'t help understanding of the news. It just made it no news whatsoever, a bland résumé of he said/she said, with a balloon of Peter Hain, AA Gill, Sue MacGregor et al floating overhead.
And so Mr Palmer\'s classroom days of long ago came flooding back.
Are there any accepted critical standards for judging last Thursday night\'s revels? Take a step to one side and ask whether there are any political standards either? If we can\'t decide who won or lost, we pay money for a quick public opinion poll to hang our hats and headlines on – and zooming first out of the box comes YouGov for the Telegraph with an interpretative story that says 22% would "seriously consider" voting for the BNP, whose support has apparently bounded upwards.
But click, as always, on to the brilliant UK Polling Report website for rather cooler analysis, and (goodness!) "nothing significant has happened".
BNP backing at 3% (up 1%) is "pretty much their norm for the last couple of months". In June, when YouGov last asked the question, 11% had a positive impression of the BNP and 72% a negative one. The latest figures are 9% positive and 71% negative. No change worth scratching your nose over (except for an 11% jump in those thinking the BBC was right to put Griffin on air).
So the polls don\'t tell us what to think. Impartial reporting doesn\'t tell us what to think. Assembled dissonant choruses of commentators don\'t tell us what to think. We\'re left to decide something or nothing for ourselves without a common system of values (except, seemingly, a need to shout loudest). Did Griffin deliver anything but seedy repulsion? What do you make of his history of Britain, with whites playing "aborigines"? Ask yourself whether you have any political standards, then get on with your life.
The difficulty, after Iraq, banks, MPs\' expenses, too many lies, too much bilious fury, is that standards have faded from sight, replaced only by anger and incomprehension. The difficulty for our own, personal question time is that we\'re adrift in a value-free world. No boxes worth ticking, Mr Palmer. No pillars of wisdom we can all sign up to, Mr Leavis. Just subjective hype and posturing that stretches from a fox on a screen to a wolf at the gates.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ered-question-time-bnp-griffin
