...And perspiration from RIchard Littlejohn
Discussion
Nothing less than victory
Richard Littlejohn
‘It’s the Sun wot won it,’ crowed Kelvin MacKenzie with characteristic chutzpah on the front page of Britain’s best-selling newspaper after Neil Kinnock had crashed to defeat in the 1992 general election. As the nation went to the polls, the Currant Bun featured the Welsh Windbag’s head inside a 40-watt bulb, under the headline, ‘If Kinnock wins, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’ When the Tories were returned to office, Kelvin was quick to claim the credit.
Well, up to a point, Lord Wapping. The Sun has a voice, but it doesn’t have a vote. In truth, it was the Sun’s readers wot won it, just as they had in every other election in modern times. During the 1980s they backed the Thatcher revolution, which transformed their lives, respected them as individuals, freed them from trade union tyranny and put money in their pockets.
By 1992 the Tories had run out of steam and had replaced the Iron Lady with a leader for whom the term lacklustre might have been minted. The good times of the Eighties were a distant memory as interest rates soared and the property bubble burst. All those who had bought their council houses suddenly found their homes worth less than their mortgages. Black Wednesday was just a few short months away.
And yet, and yet.... As a columnist on the Sun, my postbag provides a pretty accurate insight into the mood of the readers. In 1992 they were sick of the sight of the Conservatives but couldn’t bring themselves to make the great leap forward to Labour, especially under the buffoonish leadership of Kinnocchio.
Some commentators see the defining moment of that campaign as Labour’s Sheffield rally. It was meant to be Kinnock’s Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ moment. Instead, it was more like the assassination of MLK — except that Kinnock turned the gun on himself. He stood on the podium and screamed, ‘Well, AWWLLL-RIIIGHTTT!!’ He sounded less like a potential prime minister and more like Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band live at the Detroit Silverdome. Sun readers saw the future of rock’n’roll and trooped to the polls to return the Tories for a fourth successive term.
So where are we up to this time around? Again I look to my postbag, as well as my viscera. As the phoney war splutters to an end and the campaign proper begins, everything tells me this is 1992 all over again.
Voters are bitterly disillusioned with Labour. They can see through the spin and statistics, they have tired of the smears and the lies. There is an overwhelming sense of betrayal. Labour was elected with a mandate which would have allowed it to change Britain irrevocably and, depending on your point of view, for the better. The Sun and its readers decided Tony Blair had earned his chance and renounced Labour’s bad old tax-and-spend ways. Here was the opportunity to reform the public services and transform the nation for the 21st century.
Four years on, nothing. Labour’s first term had been squandered. When Blair came back for a second mandate, the electorate sent him away again with the clear message: you’ve already got your mandate — now get on with it. Four years later, 66 tax rises have not translated into ‘world-class’ schools’n’ospitals, unless you include world record illiteracy and deaths from MRSA. To call the transport system ‘Third World’ is an insult to the Third World. And then there’s that war, which the Sun and the majority of its readers supported because it was the right thing to do, but which was sold on a false prospectus because Blair can’t help lying, even when he’s right. Now, for the first time in a generation, incomes and living standards are falling. Tony Blair’s make-up is dry and cracked on his chin.
And yet, despite disappointment bordering on loathing, I still detect a reluctance among the electorate in general — and Sun readers in particular — to make the jump to the Conservatives. So I went to see Michael Howard at the Conservatives’ shiny new headquarters in Victoria Street. Come on, Michael, help convince me to convince them.
The day I saw him, he was still embroiled in the Howard Flight fiasco. A five-minute wonder had turned into a five-day feeding frenzy. The BBC and the ‘liberal’ media were filling their boots. There’s nothing they love more than a Tory Split.
My view on Flight’s dismissal as Tory deputy chairman chimes with that of The Spectator — harsh, but necessary. But was it really essential to sack him as an MP, too? ‘Absolutely,’ insisted Howard. ‘People are allowed to say things with which I disagree. But we’re not going to say one thing in private and another in public. We are not going to make promises before an election and do another thing after it. What people must not do is misrepresent my position and give the impression we’ve got a hidden agenda.’
Fair enough. The fate of Howard Flight won’t be an issue with Sun readers. As I put it in the paper, ‘Man you’ve never heard of gets the sack.’ But what if it’s a hung parliament, there turns out to be one seat in it, and the Liberals have taken Arundel? ‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen.’
Howard is adamant that he’s not even contemplating a hung parliament, let alone defeat. That’s not what a lot of his MPs are saying in private. In fact, they think a hung parliament would be as good as a victory. ‘I don’t accept that. Our private polling is very encouraging,’ he said. That’s borne out by this week’s Financial Times survey which puts the Tories in the lead among those who are certain to vote.
So it makes sense to make sure the core vote turns out, which is why Lynton Crosby has been so eager to concentrate on ‘dog-whistle’ issues.
Are you thinking what we’re thinking? Sun readers certainly are, but they’re not yet convinced the Conservatives have the answers. Crosby’s doing a sterling job, but Howard might need Stills, Nash and Young, too, if he’s to persuade the nation he deserves his chance.
This week Howard has been pushing on an open door, promising to take away the driving licences of young tearaways. It’s of a piece with his careful addressing of the causes of disgruntlement. He’s strong on crime, having reduced it by 18 per cent when he was home secretary. The other big theme of the week is a plan to allow matrons to overrule hospital managers and shut down wards infected with MRSA. Fine, Michael, but people still remember it was the Conservatives who put cleaning contracts out to tender.
Howard doesn’t want to dwell on the past. ‘I think there is a hunger for change. We have to convince people that change is possible and we can deliver. Many people in the public services, especially the professionals, are fed up with the way they are run. They are going to vote for us.’
But why should Sun readers vote for you, Michael? ‘Lower taxes, controlled immigration, cleaner hospitals and school discipline. People know they’re not getting value for money. We are going to give it to them.’
That’s what Labour says they’re already getting. ‘They’re not and they know it.’
What about tax — the Tories’ trump card in the past? ‘We are making firm promises. We’ll cut tax by £4 billion.’
Sorry, that’s not a figure to which the man on the Clapham bendybus immediately relates. ‘But he can get his head round the 50 per cent discount on council tax for pensioners and I’m confident he’ll get the remaining tax reductions which we have yet to announce, so we are giving firm figures. I think Gordon Brown’s picture of the economy is not an accurate one; that it’s too rosy. That’s why we’re devoting £8 billion which we’ve identified to reducing debt. We’ve defined £35 billion worth of savings, £23 billion we’re going to spend in different ways, of the remaining £12 billion....’
Yes, yes. But that’s like squabbling over Labour’s mythical £35 billion ‘cuts’. People understand specifics, such as £5,000 a year worse or better off, or hiring 5,000 more coppers or buying 300 more X-ray machines. They understand, for instance, the war of Margaret Dixon’s shoulder. ‘That’s true, but individual cases must reflect a trend. It wasn’t just Margaret Dixon — 67,000 people had their operations cancelled last year. We will use individual cases when they illustrate a wider point.’
Is he prepared to go for Blair’s throat? After all, Labour has already personalised the campaign with anti-Semitic slurs aimed at Howard and Oliver Letwin. ‘I’ll expose the failings of the government by concentrating on the issues.’
But personality is an issue and Blair has made his personality part of his package. Vote for me and you get a pretty straight kinda guy. Clearly that isn’t true at a family level. He chanted ‘education, education, education’ yet played the system to get his own children into elite schools. Blair talks about being honest yet his wife, who is very much part of the project, took a children’s cancer charity for £100,000 in speaking fees. All of that, m’lud, goes to character. They’re going after you, why will you not go after them on character as well as policy? ‘Because I think that the way they’ve failed this country, and it is the evidence of that failure, which is what people are most interested in. People can make up their own minds about Mr Blair’s character and I don’t think they need much help from me on that.’
OK, let’s try again. If it had been Sandra Howard swanning off round the world, fleecing children’s cancer charities for £100,000, do you honestly think Labour would not have made a political issue of that? Howard smiles. ‘I don’t feel apologetic about being different from them. I have a different set of values.’
John Major once said he had grown to hate Blair. How does Howard feel about the man who was once his Labour shadow and with whom he was said to have enjoyed a cordial, if not warm, relationship? Does he still like Blair? ‘I don’t think hate is a very productive emotion but I don’t like him as much as I used to. I’ve seen him in action in government. But I think fighting dirty would be counterproductive.’
Howard makes an articulate case against Labour, but I don’t detect any anger. ‘I certainly feel angry. The way Labour has let down the forgotten majority, those who work hard and play by the rules, is a cause for anger.’
And there he does strike a chord with the correspondents who write to me in their thousands. On every single issue, from immigration to gypsy camps to crime to the compensation culture, there is widespread fury that Labour has skewed the system in favour of criminals and chancers and persecuted the law-abiding, tax-paying majority. It might be Howard’s strongest card.
But I sense that the Conservatives are still too cautious, worried about the backlash from the BBC and the ‘liberal’ media. Too much of what’s on offer seems managerial, not revolutionary. There’s no promise of a sea change as there was in 1979 and 1997. Where’s the silver bullet? ‘There is no silver bullet.’
Perhaps not, but there won’t be a Kinnockian Silver Bullet Band moment, either. Howard’s too canny, too lawyerly for that. He must be doing something right. From flatlining at Christmas, he’s hacked away at Labour’s lead and is even in front among those certain to vote. The latest YouGov poll for Sky puts the parties at level pegging among all voters. There’s everything to play for.
On Monday, in a front-page editorial, the Sun said that for the duration of the campaign it would remain independent of the parties. The paper hasn’t made its mind up yet. Howard has three weeks. On 6 May you can be certain of one thing: whatever the outcome, it will be the Sun’s readers wot won it.
Richard Littlejohn
‘It’s the Sun wot won it,’ crowed Kelvin MacKenzie with characteristic chutzpah on the front page of Britain’s best-selling newspaper after Neil Kinnock had crashed to defeat in the 1992 general election. As the nation went to the polls, the Currant Bun featured the Welsh Windbag’s head inside a 40-watt bulb, under the headline, ‘If Kinnock wins, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’ When the Tories were returned to office, Kelvin was quick to claim the credit.
Well, up to a point, Lord Wapping. The Sun has a voice, but it doesn’t have a vote. In truth, it was the Sun’s readers wot won it, just as they had in every other election in modern times. During the 1980s they backed the Thatcher revolution, which transformed their lives, respected them as individuals, freed them from trade union tyranny and put money in their pockets.
By 1992 the Tories had run out of steam and had replaced the Iron Lady with a leader for whom the term lacklustre might have been minted. The good times of the Eighties were a distant memory as interest rates soared and the property bubble burst. All those who had bought their council houses suddenly found their homes worth less than their mortgages. Black Wednesday was just a few short months away.
And yet, and yet.... As a columnist on the Sun, my postbag provides a pretty accurate insight into the mood of the readers. In 1992 they were sick of the sight of the Conservatives but couldn’t bring themselves to make the great leap forward to Labour, especially under the buffoonish leadership of Kinnocchio.
Some commentators see the defining moment of that campaign as Labour’s Sheffield rally. It was meant to be Kinnock’s Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ moment. Instead, it was more like the assassination of MLK — except that Kinnock turned the gun on himself. He stood on the podium and screamed, ‘Well, AWWLLL-RIIIGHTTT!!’ He sounded less like a potential prime minister and more like Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band live at the Detroit Silverdome. Sun readers saw the future of rock’n’roll and trooped to the polls to return the Tories for a fourth successive term.
So where are we up to this time around? Again I look to my postbag, as well as my viscera. As the phoney war splutters to an end and the campaign proper begins, everything tells me this is 1992 all over again.
Voters are bitterly disillusioned with Labour. They can see through the spin and statistics, they have tired of the smears and the lies. There is an overwhelming sense of betrayal. Labour was elected with a mandate which would have allowed it to change Britain irrevocably and, depending on your point of view, for the better. The Sun and its readers decided Tony Blair had earned his chance and renounced Labour’s bad old tax-and-spend ways. Here was the opportunity to reform the public services and transform the nation for the 21st century.
Four years on, nothing. Labour’s first term had been squandered. When Blair came back for a second mandate, the electorate sent him away again with the clear message: you’ve already got your mandate — now get on with it. Four years later, 66 tax rises have not translated into ‘world-class’ schools’n’ospitals, unless you include world record illiteracy and deaths from MRSA. To call the transport system ‘Third World’ is an insult to the Third World. And then there’s that war, which the Sun and the majority of its readers supported because it was the right thing to do, but which was sold on a false prospectus because Blair can’t help lying, even when he’s right. Now, for the first time in a generation, incomes and living standards are falling. Tony Blair’s make-up is dry and cracked on his chin.
And yet, despite disappointment bordering on loathing, I still detect a reluctance among the electorate in general — and Sun readers in particular — to make the jump to the Conservatives. So I went to see Michael Howard at the Conservatives’ shiny new headquarters in Victoria Street. Come on, Michael, help convince me to convince them.
The day I saw him, he was still embroiled in the Howard Flight fiasco. A five-minute wonder had turned into a five-day feeding frenzy. The BBC and the ‘liberal’ media were filling their boots. There’s nothing they love more than a Tory Split.
My view on Flight’s dismissal as Tory deputy chairman chimes with that of The Spectator — harsh, but necessary. But was it really essential to sack him as an MP, too? ‘Absolutely,’ insisted Howard. ‘People are allowed to say things with which I disagree. But we’re not going to say one thing in private and another in public. We are not going to make promises before an election and do another thing after it. What people must not do is misrepresent my position and give the impression we’ve got a hidden agenda.’
Fair enough. The fate of Howard Flight won’t be an issue with Sun readers. As I put it in the paper, ‘Man you’ve never heard of gets the sack.’ But what if it’s a hung parliament, there turns out to be one seat in it, and the Liberals have taken Arundel? ‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen.’
Howard is adamant that he’s not even contemplating a hung parliament, let alone defeat. That’s not what a lot of his MPs are saying in private. In fact, they think a hung parliament would be as good as a victory. ‘I don’t accept that. Our private polling is very encouraging,’ he said. That’s borne out by this week’s Financial Times survey which puts the Tories in the lead among those who are certain to vote.
So it makes sense to make sure the core vote turns out, which is why Lynton Crosby has been so eager to concentrate on ‘dog-whistle’ issues.
Are you thinking what we’re thinking? Sun readers certainly are, but they’re not yet convinced the Conservatives have the answers. Crosby’s doing a sterling job, but Howard might need Stills, Nash and Young, too, if he’s to persuade the nation he deserves his chance.
This week Howard has been pushing on an open door, promising to take away the driving licences of young tearaways. It’s of a piece with his careful addressing of the causes of disgruntlement. He’s strong on crime, having reduced it by 18 per cent when he was home secretary. The other big theme of the week is a plan to allow matrons to overrule hospital managers and shut down wards infected with MRSA. Fine, Michael, but people still remember it was the Conservatives who put cleaning contracts out to tender.
Howard doesn’t want to dwell on the past. ‘I think there is a hunger for change. We have to convince people that change is possible and we can deliver. Many people in the public services, especially the professionals, are fed up with the way they are run. They are going to vote for us.’
But why should Sun readers vote for you, Michael? ‘Lower taxes, controlled immigration, cleaner hospitals and school discipline. People know they’re not getting value for money. We are going to give it to them.’
That’s what Labour says they’re already getting. ‘They’re not and they know it.’
What about tax — the Tories’ trump card in the past? ‘We are making firm promises. We’ll cut tax by £4 billion.’
Sorry, that’s not a figure to which the man on the Clapham bendybus immediately relates. ‘But he can get his head round the 50 per cent discount on council tax for pensioners and I’m confident he’ll get the remaining tax reductions which we have yet to announce, so we are giving firm figures. I think Gordon Brown’s picture of the economy is not an accurate one; that it’s too rosy. That’s why we’re devoting £8 billion which we’ve identified to reducing debt. We’ve defined £35 billion worth of savings, £23 billion we’re going to spend in different ways, of the remaining £12 billion....’
Yes, yes. But that’s like squabbling over Labour’s mythical £35 billion ‘cuts’. People understand specifics, such as £5,000 a year worse or better off, or hiring 5,000 more coppers or buying 300 more X-ray machines. They understand, for instance, the war of Margaret Dixon’s shoulder. ‘That’s true, but individual cases must reflect a trend. It wasn’t just Margaret Dixon — 67,000 people had their operations cancelled last year. We will use individual cases when they illustrate a wider point.’
Is he prepared to go for Blair’s throat? After all, Labour has already personalised the campaign with anti-Semitic slurs aimed at Howard and Oliver Letwin. ‘I’ll expose the failings of the government by concentrating on the issues.’
But personality is an issue and Blair has made his personality part of his package. Vote for me and you get a pretty straight kinda guy. Clearly that isn’t true at a family level. He chanted ‘education, education, education’ yet played the system to get his own children into elite schools. Blair talks about being honest yet his wife, who is very much part of the project, took a children’s cancer charity for £100,000 in speaking fees. All of that, m’lud, goes to character. They’re going after you, why will you not go after them on character as well as policy? ‘Because I think that the way they’ve failed this country, and it is the evidence of that failure, which is what people are most interested in. People can make up their own minds about Mr Blair’s character and I don’t think they need much help from me on that.’
OK, let’s try again. If it had been Sandra Howard swanning off round the world, fleecing children’s cancer charities for £100,000, do you honestly think Labour would not have made a political issue of that? Howard smiles. ‘I don’t feel apologetic about being different from them. I have a different set of values.’
John Major once said he had grown to hate Blair. How does Howard feel about the man who was once his Labour shadow and with whom he was said to have enjoyed a cordial, if not warm, relationship? Does he still like Blair? ‘I don’t think hate is a very productive emotion but I don’t like him as much as I used to. I’ve seen him in action in government. But I think fighting dirty would be counterproductive.’
Howard makes an articulate case against Labour, but I don’t detect any anger. ‘I certainly feel angry. The way Labour has let down the forgotten majority, those who work hard and play by the rules, is a cause for anger.’
And there he does strike a chord with the correspondents who write to me in their thousands. On every single issue, from immigration to gypsy camps to crime to the compensation culture, there is widespread fury that Labour has skewed the system in favour of criminals and chancers and persecuted the law-abiding, tax-paying majority. It might be Howard’s strongest card.
But I sense that the Conservatives are still too cautious, worried about the backlash from the BBC and the ‘liberal’ media. Too much of what’s on offer seems managerial, not revolutionary. There’s no promise of a sea change as there was in 1979 and 1997. Where’s the silver bullet? ‘There is no silver bullet.’
Perhaps not, but there won’t be a Kinnockian Silver Bullet Band moment, either. Howard’s too canny, too lawyerly for that. He must be doing something right. From flatlining at Christmas, he’s hacked away at Labour’s lead and is even in front among those certain to vote. The latest YouGov poll for Sky puts the parties at level pegging among all voters. There’s everything to play for.
On Monday, in a front-page editorial, the Sun said that for the duration of the campaign it would remain independent of the parties. The paper hasn’t made its mind up yet. Howard has three weeks. On 6 May you can be certain of one thing: whatever the outcome, it will be the Sun’s readers wot won it.
Mon Ami Mate said:
But I sense that the Conservatives are still too cautious, worried about the backlash from the BBC and the ‘liberal’ media. Too much of what’s on offer seems managerial, not revolutionary. There’s no promise of a sea change as there was in 1979 and 1997. Where’s the silver bullet? ‘There is no silver bullet.’
That is the problem facing the Conservatives do they appear timid or do they dare the wrath of all of our broadcast media.
yertis said:
Why do they fear the wrath of the broadcast media though?
Ultimately, the patronising attitude of the "liberal" media will be it's undoing - they believe that most people are incapable of thinking for themselves. It isn't so.
Because the broadcast media shape peoples perception of the news even greater than the print media because of the power of images.
The Tories also have the problem that they are split in two directions-to pick up the votes of floating middle class voters they have to seem respectable-and the media define what is acceptable.
Whereas to pick up the votes of floating working class voters they need fire and brimstone rhetoric on immigration, law and order etc
JagLover said:
Why do they fear the wrath of the broadcast media though?
Ultimately, the patronising attitude of the "liberal" media will be it's undoing - they believe that most people are incapable of thinking for themselves. It isn't so.
Because the broadcast media shape peoples perception of the news even greater than the print media because of the power of images.
The Tories also have the problem that they are split in two directions-to pick up the votes of floating middle class voters they have to seem respectable-and the media define what is acceptable.
Whereas to pick up the votes of floating working class voters they need fire and brimstone rhetoric on immigration, law and order etc
That's my point though - if you want to hear right wing rhetoric stop at any greasy spoon truckers cafe. The working class - those that actually work - are pretty right wing in their leanings, and there's a lot more of them than middle-class floating voters.
Littlejohn is a complete c**t.
I also see he's carrying on the anti-semitic poster myth too.. I was very glad when Sky News got rid of him - I don't know if he's scums up our airwaves anymore, but so far I've been fortunate enough not to stumble across any more of his vile opionating.
I also see he's carrying on the anti-semitic poster myth too.. I was very glad when Sky News got rid of him - I don't know if he's scums up our airwaves anymore, but so far I've been fortunate enough not to stumble across any more of his vile opionating.
GingerNinja said:
Littlejohn is a complete c**t.
I also see he's carrying on the anti-semitic poster myth too.. I was very glad when Sky News got rid of him - I don't know if he's scums up our airwaves anymore, but so far I've been fortunate enough not to stumble across any more of his vile opionating.
Littlejohn played a starring role in one of the most entertaining pieces of broadcast it has been my privilege to witness:
THE SCENE: Nicky Campbell's show on BBC Radio Five Live
THE PLAYERS: Will Self, outspoken novelist and occasional journalist; Richard Littlejohn, outspoken journalist and occasional novelist.
THE PLOT: Both men have recently published books. But that is about all they have in common.
THE EDITED TRANSCRIPT:
NICKY CAMPBELL: Your book is called How the Dead Live, Will, and basically it's a horror story - somebody dies and then stops being dead. Well you tell us. You wrote it anyway.
WILL SELF: I did write it and you manifestly haven't read it.
CAMPBELL: Well, you know, there's a lot to do on this programme.
SELF: I know, I appreciate that. It is not a snide dig. It is quite a difficult book, it takes about 13 or 14 hours to read. So it is a fair claim on people's attention spans. It is really about what happens to a pretty standard, kind of materialistic, atheistic person who, when they die discovers that really what the Tibetan Buddhists have to say about cosmology and about the afterlife turns out to be true. So to say that it is a kind of portrait of what everybody's death is like is not quite right. It is a portrait of one particular person's death and their experience about it. I suppose it has horrific elements and it is after all told from the point of view of somebody who is dead. So that that gives them a slightly kind of "Sunset Boulevard" feel, but it is not strictly speaking a horror story.
CAMPBELL: That's not to say I won't read it, you've made me feel quite guilty now.
SELF: No - that was just a low crack.
CAMPBELL: It's just that you have a lot to do in three hours and you get books at 6 o'clock on a Tuesday night - you have got to bath the kids - you know all about that.
SELF: I do. I have many children. Many, many children.
CAMPBELL: Neither did I get a chance to read yours Richard but that's not to say that I won't. But what do you make of what David Aaronovitch has said? It is front page in the Independent. He says Richard Littlejohn's novel is a 400-page recruiting pamphlet for the BNP.
LITTLEJOHN: What else do you expect from an overgrown student union leader who used to be a member of the Communist Party? I think it is a badge of honour to be attacked by people like David Aaronovitch to be perfectly honest. I might put it on the cover.
SELF: Well he is right.
LITTLEJOHN: Is he?
SELF: It is a 400 page... I've read 200 pages of it and that is a 200 page recruiting leaflet for the BNP.
LITTLEJOHN: Well, you can't comment until you have read the other 200.
SELF: Why? Does it suddenly turn into Tolstoy?
LITTLEJOHN: You'll have to read it and find out, won't you.
SELF: Well it won't take me long.
LITTLEJOHN: This is typical of the self-regarding, self-appointed metropolitan elite. If you don't agree with them they don't engage you in argument, they throw slogans at you. If you disagree with them on immigration or asylum, you are a Nazi. If you disagree with them on Europe, you are a racist or a xenophobe or a little Englander. That is all they have got - they have only got slogans - they haven't got arguments.
SELF: I don't have slogans, I have reasoned opinions and I am sitting no more than 2ft 6ins away from you, Richard.
LITTLEJOHN: Well give me a reasoned opinion then. Tell me why it is a recruiting thing for the BNP?
SELF: Because it is the kind of book... I don't actually think it is a very important or serious book and I don't think you really inflame the issue very much and I am grateful for that. I don't think it has got a lot of reach. It is actually a fairly light romp, funnily enough, for a book that is based on really a procession of stereotypes of situations - exaggerations and stereotypes cobbled together into a totally implausible and bizarre kind of moral fable or anti-moral fable. So I am not too worried about your book Richard but I do think that it represents a kind of gross distortion of reality. In a sense, I suppose if you could say it is just a light comic novel then it is allowed to be a gross distortion of reality. It is like a kind of Tom Sharpe for the far right really. Is that fair?
LITTLEJOHN: I wouldn't take the far right because you haven't read the book, clearly. You have read parts of it. The fact of the matter is I wouldn't expect anything else from you. You people, you conduct -
SELF: You haven't read my book have you?
LITTLEJOHN: I know I haven't. I'll just take it with me to the land of the free and read it by the swimming pool. It has had some fantastic reviews.
SELF: At least I have had the decency despite I'm only appearing on a radio show with you to actually bother to engage -
LITTLEJOHN: Well I didn't even know I was appearing on a radio show with you until 9 o'clock this morning otherwise I might have made an effort and at least tried to read some of it.
SELF: I knew I was appearing on this show with you last week.
LITTLEJOHN: Well nobody told me that but that is neither here nor there.
CAMPBELL: It wasn't deliberate, it wasn't deliberate.
LITTLEJOHN: But you people do tend to conduct a debate amongst yourselves.
SELF: I am engaging in a debate with you and I have done my preparation.
LITTLEJOHN: It is interesting Nicky though that you immediately pick up on what David Aaronovitch and Will Self have to say about my book and not about what Andrew Roberts -
CAMPBELL: Andrew Roberts - I was coming to that. He said that the way it was written was pacey and racey enough to be a Hollywood film. I mean that must be very pleasing for you when you get reviews from somebody like Andrew Roberts.
LITTLEJOHN: Well they are because Andrew Roberts is no only a great author himself, he is a respected historian.
CAMPBELL: Freddy Forsythe said it was a genuine and a fable of modern Britain and there were some interesting things that you are saying.
LITTLEJOHN: That's right. It is an entertainment and it is an attempt to open up a debate through -
SELF: You should be pleased that the critics are debating it.
LITTLEJOHN: I am absolutely delighted. If I get the Guardian to call it racist, sexist, homophobic and goodness knows what else, we will put that on the cover too.
SELF: It is homophobic isn't it?
LITTLEJOHN: No.
SELF: The baddies are typed up as being gay.
LITTLEJOHN: Not necessarily.
SELF: Well they are.
LITTLEJOHN: Again you don't read it.
SELF: I have read the book. I have read 200 pages of it - more than you have read of mine.
CAMPBELL: It is interesting that you two - it comes on to what I want to talk about as well - because we can talk about the merits of each other's books or whatever -
SELF: Well he can't...
CAMPBELL: - or the merits of your writing, but I do read your TV reviews and I enjoy those a lot. What I want to talk about is John Paul Getty, the philanthropist, who has given £5m to the Conservative Party, because he wants to defend the British way of life. It's an interesting question - what is the British way of life. Because clearly you both have two very different interpretations on what it is and should be. I'm glad to say because we've obviously got a bit of a literary ding-dong going on here -
SELF: Well I don't really regard him as a literary writer -
LITTLEJOHN: And I don't regard him as a journalist -
[There then followed some debate about the nature of British identity...]
LITTLEJOHN: The British people are tolerant and they are understanding.
CAMPBELL:Well that is the kind of Aaronovitch/Self criticism of what you have done in your book - that all the villains seems to be swarthy, Kosovan asylum seekers.
LITTLEJOHN: Not true at all.
CAMPBELL:With a next-door family of Somalians -
LITTLEJOHN: - that is wrong - if you have 110,000 words, you can pick what you like. That is rather what I expected and what I hoped the Guardian and Independent would do.
CAMPBELL: You are rather pleased about it?
LITTLEJOHN: I am absolutely delighted. The main villains of the piece actually are two white middle-class lawyers and policemen.
SELF: Wait a minute, the solicitor is dubbed as being part of an entry-ist plan by left-wing Islingtonians who kind of submerge themselves - one of them becomes a policeman who incidentally is graphically depicted masturbating with a truncheon - and the other one is a gay lawyer who runs a left-wing - a kind of firm that actually is vaguely impossible - that operates out of the Gray's Inn Road. I have read your book Richard, I do wish you would stop saying that I haven't. I have read 200 pages, I read them quite closely.
LITTLEJOHN: But you haven't read the book in its totality and you have to read the book in its totality.
SELF: Why?
LITTLEJOHN: In order to understand it.
SELF: Does it turn into Tolstoy at page 205?
LITTLEJOHN: No it doesn't turn into Tolstoy. I don't set out to be Tolstoy. It is a much more complex book than that.
SELF:Than Tolstoy?
LITTLEJOHN: But the conscience of the book is actually a West Indian. To say that I am stereotyping - the fact of the matter is one of the main players, his wife is a Greek Cypriot and we look at asylum from her point of view.
CAMPBELL: You're both true - you are British by definition.
SELF: I don't regard myself as British, I dissent from that.
LITTLEJOHN: Well I do.
SELF: What does it say on the passport - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - that is actual latest constitutional formulation of what Britain is. I regard myself as a citizen of an archipelago that happens to be called Britain.
LITTLEJOHN: You are not still on heroin are you?
SELF: No and listen, I would thank you kindly not to insult me in that fashion.
LITTLEJOHN: Well you have accused me of being the recruiting sergeant of the BNP!
[There then followed travel, weather and news and sport reports]
LITTLEJOHN: The British are a race of Scandanavians, of Celts, of Britons, of Irish, of Scots, we are a multi-cultural mongrel race, that's right, that's not an offensive term, it's a scientific term.
SELF: And presumably you include West Indians -
LITTLEJOHN: And West Indians, and Bengalis and Pakistanis, and all sorts, and that's what we are , and I think we are much the richer for it.
SELF: So what is your problem exactly with people who are loosely grouped as "asylum seekers"? Why have you written this book
LITTLEJOHN: I've written this book largely as an entertainment
SELF: As an entertainment? Who's it intended to entertain?
LITTLEJOHN: Well the people who buy it, certainly not intended to entertain the likes of you -
SELF: What is entertaining about it exactly? The sort of rip the gusset aside sex scenes, the tales of car crime, the idea of the good honest ex-cop, although he's not actually that honest. What's meant to be entertaining?
LITTLEJOHN: Well you'll have to read it and find out. I mean if it infuriates the likes of people like you, then it's worked
SELF: It doesn't infuriate me, you've not listened to me. I don't think it's that significant, I don't think it's going to influence people
LITTLEJOHN: It's not meant to be significant...
[There followed a discussion of liberal values]
CAMPBELL: Is what you wrote about the man who called Two Jags, that's a name you coined: "He's a chimp, a pustulating boil of resentment and class hatred, a chippy, thin-skinned puffed up laughing stock, an ocean-going tub of lard, groaning with arrogance, ego, hypocrisy, and inferiority, he's an inadequate, inarticulate embarrassment, a disgrace to Britain at home and abroad." ...Do you sometimes think that this is a human being you're talking about?
LITTLEJOHN: Nah.
[laughter]
SELF: Well he doesn't say he's a human being, does he? He uses the classic form of demonisation which is to say he's a chimp, in other words he's bestial. So he's actually dehumanised the subject of his abuse before he even moves on to piling on the pejoratives, and I think that's very psychologically interesting, of course we're all familiar with the kind of people who demonise other human beings by turning them into bestiary...we all know who does that.
[long pause]
LITTLEJOHN: In the Psychiatrist's Chair with Nicky Campbell
CAMPBELL: Caroline Feraday has the travel.
Ah that was brilliant, guaranteed fireworks with those two on the programme.
SELF: What does it say on the passport - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - that is actual latest constitutional formulation of what Britain is. I regard myself as a citizen of an archipelago that happens to be called Britain.
LITTLEJOHN: You are not still on heroin are you?
SELF: What does it say on the passport - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - that is actual latest constitutional formulation of what Britain is. I regard myself as a citizen of an archipelago that happens to be called Britain.
LITTLEJOHN: You are not still on heroin are you?
Hilts said:
Ah that was brilliant, guaranteed fireworks with those two on the programme.
SELF: What does it say on the passport - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - that is actual latest constitutional formulation of what Britain is. I regard myself as a citizen of an archipelago that happens to be called Britain.
LITTLEJOHN: You are not still on heroin are you?
I remember listening to it live in the car. The indignance in Self's voice and the complete silence after Littlejohn said this was absolutely hilarious.
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